Why Tomas Molina does the same every summer

Tomàs Molina is very clear about what his ideal summer is like, and it's far from any possible unforeseen events: “I don't like surprises and I don't need them, I like normal things. I don't need to discover anything, my wife and I are planning people, and that's why for thirty years we've been going to the same apartment in Menorca, and we do the same for the 15 days we spend there. I always swim in the pool or on the beach in front of the apartment, chat for a while with the grandmothers floating in the water, and then I go home,” explains the meteorologist. He already confessed a couple of years ago in an interview with this same section, where he explained that he met his wife at mass: “I am a very stable person, you will never have too much fun with me, but you won't have a bad time either. I'm boring but practical”.

Among all the routines that Molina follows during the 15 days he spends in Menorca, there is one that he admits is special: watching the meteor shower on the night of the tears of Saint Lawrence. “It is a tradition that we share with our children, friends, and friends' children. It makes me very happy that, even though they are already approaching thirty, the children still want to share this with us; I imagine that for them it is also an important night,” says the meteorologist. On the night of the tears of Saint Lawrence, which usually occurs around August 12th, the whole group lies down on blankets on the ground and waits for the meteors to fall while they share Quelitas, traditional savory biscuits from Mallorca. Molina gets emotional when he explains that in November he will be a grandfather for the first time and that, perhaps next summer, there will be one more little person contemplating the stars: “I think I will cry,” he assures with a hoarse voice.

When Molina was little, he used to spend his summers at camps with the youth group. The nights from that time are etched in his memory, first as a child and then as a monitor. “Being part of a youth group marks you; those years made me the person I am now,” he explains. He fondly remembers the nights singing and playing the guitar around a bonfire, when it was still allowed to make fires in the woods. He will also never forget the day he saw a white partridge, “a rare and very exceptional event,” or the monitor who was also an architect and with whom they built “very sophisticated constructions” that they then dismantled “so as not to leave a trace” of their passage.

Molina feels very grateful to have maintained friendships from the youth club for over 50 years: “My friend Núria Puente says that friendship is like a thread, when you are a teenager you are attached to the other person, the years pass and the thread stretches, but when you meet again it's as if nothing has changed: the thread is still there”.