I LOVE SPAIN speaks of a friendship born out of necessity between polar opposites, something I have experienced. When I moved to New York at 24 years old, my grandmother gave me the phone number of a cousin who lived there. She was a singer, worked as a model, and danced in nightclubs. I was a well-bred girl studying law, eager to meet cool people and expand my horizons, not to make friends with a Valencian go-go girl. But solitude got the better of me. When Mayte met me, she was horrified to find a ridiculously outfitted preppy girl with an air of superiority who couldn’t stop talking about herself. We couldn’t have hit it off any worse. Our worlds and aspirations were opposite. But our circumstances brought us together, and little by little, what was superficial gave way to what was important. Together we faced adversities and shared all kinds of experiences. We learned from each other and never let ourselves fall apart. Thirty years later, Mayte is still my best and dearest friend. Just like Gloria, I have always hated fridge magnets. But recently, at my mother’s house, I noticed one that I had brought my father from Las Vegas when I was 23. Although rusty, it is still there. Considering that we never had a very good relationship, what I thought of when I saw it wasn’t Las Vegas, but that in spite of everything, I loved him enough to think of him during that crazy trip and decided to buy him a bottle opener with his name on it. He kept it all his life, and it’s still on their fridge six years after his death. That souvenir speaks of us, not of my trip to Las Vegas.