June 12, 2015. A day filled with misty eyes and shaky goodbyes. It would mark the beginning of one of the most fundamental summers of my teenage years. I was 15 years old and officially half-way through highschool with a soul longing deeply for change, and a restless heart calling for an adventure. 

Five years ago on the day, I boarded a plane heading for Madrid. I was to spend the following slow summer months living in the south of Spain with the company of my Abuela and the sweltering desert heat. Armed with my passport in hand, my brand-new-hand-me-down iPhone 5, and an unwavering spirit it was over the Atlantic and through the Spanish countryside to Grandmother’s house I went. My eyes were as wide with excitement and hope as the Spanish sun that awaited me on the other side. For me, the journey I was about to embark on held a deep importance. 

Being a first generation Spanish-American meant veranos visiting family abroad. My summers growing up were brimming with the magic of the Mediterian coast and the warm embraces of family reunions. August days of vibrant desert sunsets, Fantasmikos and rainbow tongues, collecting the aqua blues and seafoam greens of sea glass along the dusty sand of the beach, the Earth shattering and soul shaking rhythm of flamenco shows in the park, childhood giggles between heaping bites of Abuela’s home cooked meals. I have been nothing short of blessed to have the honor of calling Spain my second home. 

The summer of 2015 was to be different though. I would be traveling alone, with 41 days of distance separating me from my parents and siblings. It was a long step away from the familiar, but I welcomed the change whole-heartedly. This new found independence offered me a crucial space to redefine what my Spanish heritage meant to me, and to freely explore a place I thought I had known so well. These lessons of self-growth presented themselves in varied manners. Some were as obvious to me at the time as the drowning warmth of the Tabernas. Others however, crept in slowly and quietly throughout the summer, like the cool air of desert nights that tip-toed in at the day’s end. Some lessons would take me years to fully understand and process; one of them would be the importance photography had in curating what Almería represented to me, both visually and metaphorically. My days were spent sitting on the hardened leather seat of my Abuela’s bike, weaving in and out of cobbled alleyways, exploring and photographing. The only camera I had available to me at the time was my cell phone camera, but it far from discouraged me. I captured the people of my city, the beaches in which my dusty feet had walked miles along the years, the range of colors from pastel pinks to dusty browns, and the ever present sun that loomed above coating me in golden warmth. When the heat became unbearable and my legs ached for relief, I would venture into the Centro Andaluz de la Fotografía by the apartment I shared with my grandma, and stand in air conditioned awe at the masterful photographs that hung around me. Without even knowing it at the time, it was photography that served as a crucial tool to allow me to literally reinvent the image of what this incredible city meant to me. 

These are those photographs: