Does place change our personality or does our personality change our perception of a place?

I had a most unusual experience last night. I finished working a little after 9pm and left my apartment in El Born (Barcelona) strolling in search of dinner. To my surprise, there was no line at Cal Pep, so I walked in and was immediately directed to a seat at the bar, middle right. (This isn’t the unusual experience that I’m referring to — no line at Cal Pep).

A couple maybe a few years older than me was sitting to my right at the bar, at my immediate right a man dressed in black with dark curly hair, next to him a redheaded woman in a sparkly gold jacket and green pants. After a few minutes, I noticed the man looking my direction down the bar and heard him commenting something to the waiter. My impression was that he had spotted somebody famous. He was saying something along the lines of: “She’s alone? That can’t be,” and the waiter nodding yes, she was, and the man telling the waiter he couldn’t believe she was alone and that this was the waiter’s “chance in a million.”

So I scanned down the bar to my left also, expecting to see Rosalía or Penélope Cruz, or maybe less famous whose name I wouldn’t know but who I would recognize as strikingly beautiful. I saw nobody he could be talking about. There were mostly men, and two male-female couples. Where was this person? The man was still commenting to the waiter, and I realized the waiter was darting glances at me. He was talking about me, and I was so confused. I even asked the waiter after the couple left because I thought I had to be mistaken. It isn’t so uncommon to see a woman eating out alone, particularly at the bar.

This brings me to a theory I have, because there’s no other explanation I have come up with for why I regularly attract reactions in Barcelona that don’t happen in other places: that Barcelona brings out an infectious upbeat energy in me that attracts positive attention.

And I wonder: does the nature of a place tend to turn us into a different version of ourselves? Or is it because we are acting a certain way in a place that we perceive it as having a certain personality? I’m sure it’s neither exclusively one or the other, but I do wonder which effect is stronger.

Yes, this is particularly about Barcelona and my love affair with it, which I think is mutual.

I adore Barcelona. It’s almost a meme, I love it so much, but I genuinely do and I genuinely feel happiness just walking through Barcelona streets and looking at its buildings and views. I’ve even come here before at a very low point in life amidst an extremely stressful situation when I was barely sleeping due to the stress and also medical problems I was dealing with; and it still brought a smile to my face and relieved my mind some just to be in Barcelona. I am in general a person who is curious and passionate about many things, and there are other cities that I also love, like NYC, Madrid, Rome, Valencia. Yet Barcelona is a notch above for me.

Because Barcelona brings out so much happiness in me, and I walk around with a big smile and exuding positive energy, I also attract positive energy — or at least this is my theory. I don’t have trouble meeting people or striking up conversations with strangers as a general rule. Yet in Barcelona, I meet people constantly, and will return to a shop or a restaurant after many months away (before I lived here) only to have the waiter or the shop owner remember me. I’m afraid this is going to sound arrogant or stuck-up, but that isn’t my intent at all. It’s just about the positive energy, and perhaps for Catalans, disarming and/or charming that this “guiri” can’t stop waxing poetic “en castellano” about how much she loves Barcelona.

I also liked Barcelona before I had this wealth of positive personal experiences here. I was drawn to the living, breathing art on the streets; the distinctive modernist architecture, the combination of a big city with warm weather and a beach (my childhood ideal that has stayed with me); the delicious food. Those were all in Barcelona’s essence and brought out this vivacity in me that then attracted positive personal interactions and mutually reinforced my love of Barcelona and my vivacity when here.

Cities, regions, countries, do indeed have distinct personalities, and that can become accentuated over time, particularly in places that attract many people moving from elsewhere.

New York City, for instance, is the city of big dreams and big ambitions and people from everywhere and striving both to get by and for greatness. So more people move there just out of college and immigrating from around the world because they dream big, because they want to take on the biggest challenges, because they want to “comerse el mundo” as they say in Spain. They know that “if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere” and that everywhere in the world, NYC is instantly recognized and held on a pedestal.

Santa Fe, New Mexico is known for art and artists, and that brings more artists there as well as tourists seeking to visit art galleries and buy in local art shops and at markets.

If you wound up living in Santa Fe because your parents lived there, even if not involved in art, you might be more likely to do something artistic or creative.

If you grew up in a country where freedom of expression was repressed, punished, even a crime, you might learn to behave in a certain fashion.

Is the effect of the personality of a place impacting how we behave stronger or is the effect of how we behave in a place impacting the experiences we have there stronger?

Someone said to me recently that I’m a different person when I speak in English than when I speak in Spanish. I’m also a different person when I’m in Barcelona. Could I replicate this exuberance somehow in other places and have the same effect? I don’t know.

I do know that I I love the me that I am when Barcelona rubs off on me.