Six thirty and the stalls are already loud. Vendors stacking cherries into pyramids that will not survive the hour. A man shouts prices in Catalan, then Spanish, then something that sounds like both. Nobody asks me to buy anything. Nobody needs to.
The Leica stays in my hand longer than it works. That is the trick with markets, you have to earn the shot by doing nothing first. So I stand near the jamón stall and let the smell decide things for me, salt and fat and sawdust on the floor. An old woman elbows past with a shopping trolley older than me, wheels squeaking in rhythm with the crowd. I do not photograph her. Some moments are for keeping, not for film.
Cherries, then. I buy a small paper cone of them from a stall near the Boqueria’s arched entrance, the light falling through that famous stained glass roof in coins of red and yellow. My fingers go dark with juice before I even lift the camera. There is something honest about food that stains you. It refuses to be tidy, refuses Instagram, refuses the idea that mornings should be photogenic before they are lived. I eat three cherries before I take a single frame.
The light here does something particular. Not soft like Lisbon, not harsh like Rio. Barcelona light at nine has an edge to it, cuts through the stalls in long diagonals, catches the wet skin of eggplants and the pink of cut watermelon stacked in careful rows. I think about my father’s kitchen in Milan, how he used to say a market tells you everything about a city’s character before the museums do. He was usually right about small things like that.
A boy runs past chasing a pigeon that has no intention of being caught. Somewhere a blender starts up, orange juice for the tourists who have not yet learned to order it in Catalan. The Leica finally clicks, once, twice, the shutter sound lost under the noise of the market. Nobody notices. Nobody poses.
I finish the cherries sitting on a low stone ledge outside, watching the crowd thicken as the morning wakes up properly. My fingers are still stained. The film in my camera does not know what color they are, and somehow that feels right. Some things are better remembered than shown.
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