Independent Catalonia. This was last Friday’s announcement, a most anticipated proclamation by a growing part of the Catalan people.

Myself, as a newcomer, feel like I have enough information to form an opinion, but I still find myself far from understanding the complexities that make up this question.

I go to the Ciutadela Park and then through the streets of Born with a watchful eye, camera in hands. What would I find among the citizens who have just separated from Spain?

What I find are smiles, carefree looks, steps that follow their daily rhythm, as it was the day before, as it will be the next day. I found a warm sun that warms the atmosphere of Barcelona and a moon rising early in the late October sky.

I didn’t have to look much further for that which were light things, aspects of what doesn’t care about what is understood as an identity, or what is lived as disrespect and suffering, of what fights, cries, screams and is silenced.

It is not that these other aspects do not exist or that they do not matter. I guess I was just looking somewhere else.