The love story of Xavier Sala i Martín and Sílvia Tremoleda, Barça's dietician

Economist Xavier Sala i Martín perfectly remembers the first day he saw his wife. "I was a Barça director, and Barça directors, even if they don't get paid, work like crazy and have official lunches all day. I started to gain weight and needed to exercise, so I joined a gym. The personal trainer sent me to a dietitian, and the dietitian called me Silvia. I thought she'd found me handsome. She didn't know me at all, and over time I learned that, in reality, what she'd been thinking was: "Who is that tacky guy wearing a fuchsia blazer?"

That "tacky guy in a fuchsia blazer" was, curiously, the one who signed the paychecks of the 10,000 people who worked for Barça as treasurer, among them Silvia Tremoleda, who was the dietitian. They started seeing each other quite often because—Silvia made it clear—dieting and exercising one day a month wouldn't do her any good. And that's how they started getting closer: "One thing led to another, and now we've been together for fifteen years. We also have a son, Max."

Sala i Martín assures that what has kept them together "is the complete opposite of what all the experts say," and that is "that we have nothing in common." "I don't like exercising, and she's not at all interested in finances. When I met her, she trained about six hours a day, and she still trains for a few more now. She has a perfect body; if you touch her, she seems made of iron. We both like to read, but to each our own: a player for one more match, she reads about proteins in the colon," explains Sala and Martín. Her son, she says, has a bit of both: she has encouraged him to play tennis, taekwondo, and hockey, while he has encouraged him more toward painting, music, and chess. "He's 9 years old and does everything; he's very good at math, he also plays the violin, he loves to paint, and he's very good at hockey," she adds.

When Pep Guardiola moved to Manchester, he took Silvia Tremoleda with him, and the couple's life moved between New York and Manchester without any problem with the distance. "I'm not very romantic; falling in love is a set of neurotransmitters in the brain whose purpose is to keep the couple together while the children are young. To maintain family unity, nature created love. I know it's not very romantic, but that's how it is," she concludes.