Barcelona
Writing

Barcelona doesn't belong to Spain. It barely belongs to itself.

Identity & ownership · Heat & light · The Gothic quarter

Barcelona is a city in an argument with itself about what it is. Catalan flags hang from apartment windows across from Spanish flags. The architecture is the most eccentric in Europe. The Gothic quarter is genuinely medieval and genuinely tourist-infested simultaneously, which creates a specific tension in the narrow streets — you are always both in history and in a theme park version of history. The writing notices this tension.

"In the Gothic quarter the tourists photograph the stones. The stones are twelve hundred years old and do not notice. A woman in a Barça shirt argues with someone on the phone. The stones do not notice this either."

Tumbleweed Words — Barcelona

The Barcelona pieces in Tumbleweed Words are concerned with the performance of identity — what it means to belong to a place, what a city asks of the people who live there, what is gained and lost when a city becomes a destination rather than a home. Literary minimalism is useful here because it strips away the picturesque to find what is actually happening underneath.

David — Tumbleweed Words Flash fiction and poetry written on trains, in hostels, and in city streets. Published in Litro, Adelaide Magazine, Cleaver Magazine, and The Dundee Anthology. Pushcart-nominated. Five years on Substack.