Living in Spain is teaching me how to do nothing.

On the art of slowing down

It was six-thirty.

I was sitting on the hill overlooking the neighbourhood of Horta in Barcelona, where I am currently based.

There was a deepening red in the sky as the sun dipped below the mountain behind me, and far out to sea the moon was beginning to rise.

I was there to take some photos and videos, and I wasn’t alone.

The hill was busy. With families, who had brought up deck chairs and picnics. With couples, who were strolling or sitting on benches. With individuals, who were just there to watch the sun go down over the city.

I had only been in Spain for a couple of days before I could feel the tension draining from my shoulders. Barcelona is not a quiet city: between the barking dogs, the traffic, the sirens, and the yelled conversations between balconies, it’s a perpetual cacophony. But it’s a different type of noise.

Images: Thomas Winward

The noise of London is one of hustle. It’s the noise of a million people desperately trying not to be late for a meeting that could make or break their career. The pubs and bars are crowded with colleagues trying to one-up each other to net that promotion or big project.

The noise in Barcelona is of friends catching up over coffee and tortilla. It’s of children swinging in the plaza playground while the parents set the world to rights over a drink and a bite to eat.

The wages are lower, but the spirits feel much higher. Businesses are not afraid to shut their doors so the owners can spend two hours with their kids over lunch. If it’s Sunday, or Monday, past 5pm or if the owner just isn’t feeling like it, a business will probably close for the day. The owner of the bar down our road isn’t working on his multi-step marketing plan to grow the business: he’s smoking a cigarette and reading a book.

I’ve written here before about the vanity of a society that strives to grow its economy to the detriment of anything else, but it’s a point worth reiterating. Infinite growth in a finite world is not possible, yet if you listen to any kind of media or political commentary in the UK that’s all you will hear people talk about. Politicial careers live and die by a few negligible percentage points of economic growth or decline.

Healthcare, education, happiness, social health, social mobility, soil health, biodiversity, water quality - nothing is mentioned to even a fraction of the intensity and passion at which people talk about economic growth, yet these are all vital indicators of the overall health of society, and much of it has only worsened as economic growth has increased.

I’m not saying that Spain has the answers to all of these. Far from it. It struggles with the same dependence on fossil fuels and overuse of water and soil degradation and biodiversity loss and people dropping dead in the street from fossil fuel-intensified summers that all countries are experiencing. But there’s something about the way its people seem perfectly happy just sitting and chatting for hours on a street corner instead of monetising their every waking hour that feels much more… human to me.

Images: Thomas Winward

My wife is still on maternity leave, so we have taken the opportunity to move to Barcelona for a while - a city close to our hearts. I am now self-employed, and happy to take a significant pay cut by turning down projects for the sake of spending time with my family.

I’m fully aware of our privilege in being able to do this. Not everyone has the cash in the bank that allows them to take several unpaid weeks off work. But it was also a conscious decision to take the financial hit to do this.

Aside from the occasional week of holiday, I haven’t stopped working since 2014. My time working for a video production agency regularly sucked away my evenings and weekends, and the only thing I gained from doing that was a headache and irritated friends. In 2022, I left that job on a Tuesday evening and started a new job the next morning, with barely more than 12 hours to catch my breath.

I’ve never earned a lot of money - not much more than the average UK salary and considerably less than the average London salary - but I have always been a diligent saver and careful of only spending within my means.

And now I’m here, where waxbills and treecreepers flit between the pines, with no abitrary meetings to attend or a boss to report to or a timesheet to fill out, and I’m more at peace now than I have been in a long time. I can hone my crafts of writing, photography and filmmaking. I can sit outside a cafe for as long as I like.

Things will change, as they always do. I’m sure I’ll begin to worry when the money starts to run out and I’ll have to find some more projects to pay the bills. But I just don’t want work to be the driving factor of my life. I don’t want to lay on my deathbed and regret spending so much time in an office. I have been given this opportunity to slow down, to reset, to be present, and for now I am going to prioritise that over filling my coffers.

If you are ever presented with a similar chance, I urge you to do the same. Until everyone has the liberty to live an unshackled life, our society will never be truly healthy. But perhaps it’s something we can at least collectively strive for.

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In case you missed it…

My latest film The Essex Ways is available to watch for free on YouTube. It features James Lawrence - known online as Man About Country - who spent 21 days walking 400km to rediscover the people, stories and landscapes of our home county of Essex.