Madre Mia. Barcelona is Hot.

For 43 years, I lived in the state of Georgia, USA. I was born in Atlanta, the capital. While I moved around a bit, I never strayed more than an hour of the city center. “Hotlanta” is the term outsiders would call my city, but us natives scoffed at this term. True locals never say this because the city was never any more hot than other major cities. Located just north of Florida, there is no denying that Georgia sits squarely in the south. The entire southeast of the US is bathed in humidity, especially during the summer months.

My last Georgia residence of 11 years had FOUR high-efficiency air conditioning units blasting chilly air. These circulated centrally throughout the house in every room and crevice, every second of the day, regardless of occupancy. My husband would remotely control the temperature from an app to ensure that the family and dogs were always comfortable at 68° (20°C). We even had a “good night” button on our home automation system which would lower the temperature further while we slept, because we truly enjoyed sleeping in the cold and under blankets. Before work, I would start my 8-passenger SUV remotely with the key fab. I would let the car idle for 15 minutes with the A/C on max so the interior would already be cool for me and the other 7 imaginary people I carried. When I left my car to either go to the already frigid place of work or shopping, I was never actually more than 20 parking spaces away from arctic air. It did not matter where or when I went anywhere. I never actually felt the outside air for more than a minute or two. So, no. Atlanta is not hot. The entire city is a perfectly air conditioned bubble.

After selling nearly every single material belonging, my family and I moved to Barcelona, Spain, in February 2018. When we arrived, it was quite cool, even cold some days. I remember after a week of our residency, we saw snow flurries in the city center while walking around and the iconic mountain behind the city, Tibidabo, actually had accumulation. Supposedly, this occurs once every 10 years or so. As the months moved on, Barcelona kept improving. We walked everywhere, talked to everyone, ate everything. We enjoyed every single day because the weather was impeccable: windows open, slight chill at night, awesome breezes, and sunshine. The residents would warn that everything would change on July 1 for the worse, but that normality returns September 1, like clockwork. And we would laugh, thinking the locals were weak and just could not handle the hotness. Because, of course, we bore from the land of heat and humidity. Hotlanta. We survived without so much complaining. Scoff.

And then July 1^st arrived. HOLY HELL. The weather forecast stated a heat wave was in effect and summer had fully arrived. Overnight, the Barcelonians discarded their full coverage bland winter clothing in exchange for more colorful, but significantly less coverage, shorts and bras. We studied the thermometer watching it quickly rise from 24 to 30 to 36, and not understanding what these numbers really meant. In Fahrenheit, these are cold digits. We turned on the one small wall unit for some relief. It was perplexing that this tiny, old unit could cool a 3 bedroom flat. Come to find out, it couldn’t. It was designed to cool one room, the salon, and barely reduced the temperature. Hence, the sliding doors to close off this room. To go to the bathroom, one had to leave the salon quickly, run to the toilet, grab the hand towel, wipe away runways of sweat from the chin to the chest in a matter of minutes, and dash back to the room with semi-cold air.

We tried to continue our rituals of walking, eating, drinking, and shopping. Stepping outside our building was like entering a steam room: boiling, humid, tropic, sweltering. We learned to carry personal fans to move the air around our faces. We learned to take public transit but even the air con inside the buses was huffing and puffing. We found a few corridors in metros with good wind speed, and we would just hang out for awhile trying to dry our armpits and under-boob perspiration. We lived with permanent sweat stains down our shirt backs. Local shops just barely endured with an oscillating fan. The little A/C units in restaurants coughed with tepid air, forcing us to outdoor tables rotating around small umbrellas for minimal shade. We read that more than half of Barcelona residents do not even have air conditioning, or deodorant. We bought 2 huge floor standing fans. We purchased a single air conditioning unit and rigged the machine and its exhaust with a sliding door, Velcro, and duct tape [so Spanish]. We moved our beds into the living room, pulled down all the shades, and slept without covers. We were exhausted and barely moved. We were taking 4 cold showers a day just for a tiny bit of relief. We stopped laughing. We started complaining. Que Calor! No Puedo! Joder!¹ We looked for a reprieve and everyone gave us the solution of September 1^st.

And after 8 weeks of the dog days of summer, September arrived. And we studied the thermometer, watching it quickly decline to the low 20’s. We opened the shades and windows, moved the furniture back into their respective places, looked with surprise as overnight the poofy jackets and bland winter clothing was back in style, and then we vowed never to stay in Barcelona for another summer again.

¹ Translation: How hot! I can’t! F**k!