My New Home: Barcelona

I am finally Post-Nomad in Spain—but I'll also miss the community I'm leaving behind

Greetings from Barcelona—

It’s here, finally. I’ve moved to Spain! I know I’m supposed to be excited (thus the gratuitous exclamation mark)—and I am. But before I say much about the place I’ve come to, I want to say a few words about the place I just left.

My home in Rumney, New Hampshire, will still be there. It is maybe the place in which I’ve felt the most at home as an adult, after a wandering childhood in which we switched houses roughly once every two years. It is an old farmhouse on an acre of land, on Main Street in a classic New England village founded nine years before the American Revolution. There are farms in every direction, a swimming hole across the street, and world-class sport climbing down the road.

On my last weekend there, an overnight rainstorm came through and the temperature dropped. My flight to Barcelona on Sunday was at 10:55 pm—which meant I could squeeze in one more day of climbing before leaving for the airport. The conditions demanded it.

When my climbing partner and I got to the crag, it was a perfect, cool, Summer morning, with a light breeze, and few clouds. I got one dose of victory on a resend of a 45-degree overhanging prow called Social Outcast (12a), and later, one dose of humility, as I fell trying to resend a mega-classic, beautiful, and varied route called The Crusher (11d).

Social Outcast, 12a — Rumney, NH

As I lowered down from that climb, I knew it would be my last for a while—and a deep, bittersweet sadness came over me. It was time to leave this place, even with so many climbs unclimbed. So many projects not yet sent.

Friends and family alike had been asking me for weeks: “Are you SO excited for Spain?”

And I finally had an answer: actually, I’m sad to leave New Hampshire.

The excitement did come later. After I’d landed in Barcelona, after I picked up the keys to my new apartment, dropped my bags, changed into shorts, and opened the double French doors out to the Juliet balcony, overlooking a pedestrianized, tree-lined street in Sant Antoni. Cafes all around, infinite bars and restaurants, a fruit and vegetable shop on every corner, and the old-timer Catalunyans socializing on the park benches below, hats on head, canes in hand.

Yes, I am excited to be there. But I am also sad to leave New Hampshire—especially the community of climbers there.

And I have had SUCH great climbing partners over the last four years. You all know who you are. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. For the catches and support, the friendship, all the sends, and for creating and being part of such an amazing community there. I have cherished every day at the crag, even the days I suck air, fall and feel weak, and wonder if I’ve already peaked.

The crag is an easy place to have existential crises. And it’s my favorite place in the world.

Of course, there is climbing here in Spain, too—a dozen lifetimes worth, all within a 2-hour drive of Barcelona. Thousands upon thousands of routes, not just in Cornudella de Monstant, where I bought a fixer-upper earlier this year, but also in Margalef, and in Montserrat, Oliana, and more places I’ve heard of but not yet been.

But I don’t know those places yet, and I don’t really know the community. That is still to come.

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I. Post-Nomad

I’ve been writing for so long to slow down. Be settled. Invest in place, in people.

And yet I kept moving around.

The last year was one trip too many. From Washington D.C. to the mountains in New Hampshire, to New Zealand, to Spain and back, to Mexico for two months, then back to Spain, and back to D.C., and with so many places in between. Of course, I wouldn’t have wanted to give any of them up.

It was a year of transition, from splitting my time between D.C. and New Hampshire to not splitting my time at all.

This will be the first time I’ve lived just in one place in five years, and the first place I’ve chosen to live outside being stuck somewhere, whether because of a pandemic or a parenting agreement.

Finally, I’m post-nomad.

The view out my balcony in Sant Antoni, Barcelona. Home for the next 11 months.

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II. Where I’m getting advice

There is a lot to figure out moving to a new country.

One of the first things is where to seek advice. Locals are good—tinged by personal bias, sure, but deeply valued nonetheless. I’m grateful to have a few local climber friends on WhatsApp, but I try to make spare use of their time—mostly I go to them for highly specific questions on which they’re likely to have special knowledge (“Can you park vehicles at the climbing gym in Montjuïc overnight?”)

Still, a local is just one person’s opinion, and think of how many different opinions there are of your own chosen home.

Then, there is Google—still invaluable, but flawed. When I was apartment hunting in Barcelona, for example, I kept seeing articles in my news feed like, “Best Neighborhoods in Barcelona to Live.”

Highly relevant—just not that useful.

The problem with these articles is first, they are not specific enough to my situation. And second, I soon developed my own opinions about Barcelona’s best neighborhoods, and mine were in direct conflict with whoever was writing these posts.

One example: those Best Places to Live articles simply cannot get away from recommending neighborhoods like the Gothic Quarter, El Raval, and El Born. But these are Barcelona’s top tourist neighborhoods, and thus—to my mind—should actually be directly excluded if you plan to live here. I don’t want to walk out my door every day to a street buzzing with 80% tourists, nor do I want to pay the associated inflated prices—no matter how “trendy” a neighborhood is.

But that’s just me. (Also pro tip: if an article on Google describes a neighborhood as “trendy,” that means it was discovered 5-10 years ago, is now twice as expensive, and is no longer trendy).

Another example is transit. Barcelona has comprehensive bus and subway networks complementing numerous scooter and bike-sharing systems. The first time I wanted to get from my apartment to somewhere not quite walkable, I was nearly overwhelmed by the choices.

You can find a bunch of articles that describe the Barcelona transit system overall. And, Google Maps is great at telling you which buses or trains will get you from here to there. But as to weighing the four different bike-sharing systems against each other, or figuring out which apps cover which services, or whether to buy monthly passes, or the 10-punch, or pay as you go, or just throw your hands up and walk the damn 45 minutes… Google can’t really help that.

For my part, the two most useful sources for the kinds of highly specific questions I’ve had so far are Reddit and Facebook Groups. Both are searchable, and both are populated by real people dealing with the same set of issues I’m dealing with.

The relevant subreddit is r/Barcelona. I typed “electric scooter” into the search box and found the most useful advice on the subject so far, all comments time-stamped.

Meanwhile, I’ve repeatedly searched two Facebook groups, Moving to Spain and Digital Nomads Spain, for advice and not been disappointed. Again, all time-stamped, all from real people facing similar questions.

The important part in all of this is not trying to figure everything out all at once, tempting though it may seem. It’s no use trying to decide everything about how to live in a new country when you’ve only lived there for a week.

Anyway: so far my life is not unlike other trips where I’ve rented an Airbnb for a few weeks and settled into a routine. I’m settling here, as well. Except I’ve got way more time.

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III. Things not in your control

My ending up in Barcelona was highly contingent, as I wrote last week. I didn’t sort through options, examine criteria, and choose this city over a range of competing options. It happened, essentially, because of path dependency. One thing led to another, which led to another (my climbing trip to Siurana, discussions with my son’s mom about school options, etc.)

Nor did I choose Barcelona simply because I fell in love, as happened the first time I went to Cabarete, in the DR, or the first time I went to Lisbon.

Still, I do like Barcelona quite a bit (how could you not?).

And that falling in love thing—call it the X Factor—is important. Maybe the most important. But a lot of times the X Factor is stirring your emotions because that place really does meet a lot of the criteria you’ve been searching for. Or, because it unearths deeply held longings or gives expression to core values.

A great summation of how to sort through those values comes from Dan Dascalescu, who posted a long piece on this in a Facebook Group. He advises to think about what you can and can’t control in a place—and to choose based on the latter:

You can make more money, but you can't change nature, the weather, the culture/people, or the official language. Start with the most selective criterion that's a dealbreaker for you. For example, if you absolutely must live in a surfing city with warm weather, that eliminates most places on the planet. Start with that.

Dan was speaking my language.

I’m not going to move somewhere without easy access to rock climbing. It’s essentially non-negotiable. So that, very usefully, narrows the search.

Here’s Dan’s full list of things “out of your control”:

1. Climate: weather, temperature, etc. I.e., why rich people move to California.

2. Nature: the natural surroundings—cliffs, waves, mountains, etc.

3. Laws: taxes, social safety nets, building regs, recreation drug laws.

4. Language/culture: most people will ultimately want to learn the language and culture, so easier if that’s, say, Spanish or French, as opposed to something insanely difficult.

5. People: you can’t control locals, but you will want to make friends drawn from certain communities, so make sure those communities exist.

6. Dating. Religion, culture, language, etc. As Dan writes, if dating is important to you, “stack the odds in your favor” by finding a large city that generally matches your preferences.

7. Schools. This is essentially why I ended up in Barcelona, and not in the countryside or even a smaller Spanish city.

Finally, there is one criterion generally in your control, and also often overlooked, something Dan calls “Microlocation.”—i.e., your immediate surroundings like the apartment, street, and neighborhood:

The concept of microlocation has some implications:

a) It's mistaken to write off a place because your hotel/Airbnb was in a mediocre area. An annoying microlocation (e.g. noisy neighbors) might negatively color your entire impression of a place, while a great microlocation might be just a few blocks away…

b) You can find a great microlocation in most places in the world. The other side of this coin is that you can become isolated. For example if you seek an English community in a Hispanic city, you can find a group of expats, move in that area (say, Palermo in Buenos Aires), but you'll still be somewhat isolated from the rest of the country…

c) Optimize as much as you can the things you do most often and most of the time. Some apply to everyone - get a great bed, laptop and phone (and maybe car), and keep them in great shape. Other things should apply to everyone (e.g. great gym). The rest depend on your particular interests and goals in life.

One thing I was optimizing for in the apartment search was being within walking distance of my son’s school. We are coming from the D.C. suburbs, where everyone drives everywhere all the time, and I’m really happy that here my son is going to be able to walk back and forth every day.

I’ve got a lot more to say about the neighborhood, Sant Antoni, but I’m also weary not to let my first impressions of everything be the impression.

Until next time—