The photographs date back to 2012, when, passing through Barcelona, I chose to remain, drawn by the urge to step inside the bars of the Raval district, captivated by the many figures who animated them.

What was meant to be a stopover stretched into a year. I left the city depleted, my strength worn thin by all I had given and received. Yet the solitude of those people etched itself into me, and it has lingered ever since.

Only now, thirteen years later, I have managed to revisit that first attempt. The passing years have inevitably transformed it: experience gathered, shifting photographic sensibilities, and a more layered language have all left their trace. I also come back with the awareness that what I left unfinished back then, the effort of a restless twenty-nine-year-old who believed he had endless time, is no longer the same as what I can now envision and mold.

Through this work, I refine that journey and pay tribute to those who unknowingly sustained it.