The summer that Alba Riera fell madly in love (and kept it a secret)

One thing, dears, do you know what Alba Riera's favorite season is? Summer, of course. “In summer I do an incredible glow up, I change my personality, I'm much happier. Summer smells of jasmine and the sea, everything is possible and everything can be memorable if you want it to be. Summer has this thing that from the moment it begins you know it will end and you live it with much more intensity. For me, when my alarm goes off in the morning, what I think is: 'One less day until summer',” she assures.

She has many memorable summer nights, but there is one from her adolescence that left its mark on her. It was the summer she fell in love for the first time, at a camp in Solsonès. “I was completely obsessed with him, he was older than me, a totally platonic and unattainable story, I hadn't even exchanged a word with him,” recalls the communicator. At these camps, there was a summer night that was “the best of all” because there was a dance and some of these platonic loves ended up taking shape. “I'm very much into romantic comedies. You give me a summer night at a camp and a dance and my mind has fuel for a while,” says Riera, who still remembers how long she spent thinking about the look she would wear.

“I know it sounds bad, but in class I was part of the popular group and for me the camps were a challenge, I was leaving my safe space and had to win a place again,” she explains. And that last night, her place had to be next to the boy she liked.

“I’ve always been quite cheeky, but I think that night I was especially brave. ‘I’m not leaving here without my moment,’ I told myself.” She approached the boy and asked him if he wanted to dance a slow song. “He said yes and thousands of years have passed, but I swear I can still feel the touch of our skin, how we moved on the dance floor and all the sensations in my body. It was the first time I felt real butterflies, he gave me a caress on the shoulder that I remembered for a whole year”.

Around her, meanwhile, the grown-ups were doing “the sweet sticky dance”. “The counselors gave them a sweet sticky treat and the couples would nibble at it until they kissed. The truth is I don't know how they organized something like that, but it was the first time I saw people kissing”. 

Years later, Riera met that boy at the institute. “I never told him anything, not even that the girl I had danced with was me. Love is 80% lies and 20% truth and I didn't want to spoil that memory. It was a very pure and innocent moment and I will always want to keep the magic of it,” she concludes.