Five Things I Learned as a Filipino International Student in Barcelona

1

Nothing prepared me for this unique experience.

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Day-to-day life

One day, I’m speaking in my mother tongue with jeepney drivers, and the ate sa karinderya about mundane things. We talk about the weather, the price of petrol, and how the price of basic goods keeps increasing. I was in a world where I had a wide range of topics, from small talk to deep, philosophical discussions.

The next day, I found myself in a world where I couldn’t understand anything. I want to say more in conversations, make new friends, say hi to the pareja mayor who lives in the building next door, but the words get stuck in my chest. La anciana still calls me “reina,” and that’s enough for me.

Suddenly, I could only participate in small talk that lasts at most one minute. Two minutes, and I start panicking because they start mentioning words I don’t know.

I want to enter conversations, especially since la gente española is warm and talkative, but I get anxious because solo hablo un poco español y me contestan en mucho español. Do you see the struggle?

I found myself using Google Translate in Mercadona because hita ng manok is suddenly muslo de pollo or even cuixa de pollastre in Bonpreu.

Spanish bureaucracy

Speaking Spanish is also vital in navigating the bureaucracy, which Spain is so famous for. As a foreign citizen, I needed to register my accommodation at the ajuntament. This is called the empadronamiento, or simply called empadron.

There are not a lot of public officials who can speak English, and understandably so. I am the one who came here, so of course, I have to adapt to the language and customs of the locals.

No one really cares if you get it perfect. Everyone here only cares about understanding and being understood.

As a perfectionist (yes, I am self-aware), I was scared of making grammatical mistakes. But as my Ecuadorian friend Michu told me, “Cody, you have to allow yourself to make mistakes, it’s the only way you can learn the language”.

I guess that advice not only applies to learning languages. No one gets moving abroad “perfect”. There is no scoreboard measuring how well you are doing in another country.

But you know what? No one really cares if you get it perfect. Everyone here only cares about understanding and being understood.

You can only do so much to prepare

There are things you can prepare for, but not everything.

In December 2023, I was applying for various master’s programmes when I decided to move out of my grandmother’s house.

I had not received any admission letter yet, but I told myself I needed to gain skills on how to live alone, especially since it would be my first time going out of the Philippines for a long time.

Part of my preparation is learning how to cook my favourite Filipino dishes. Yes, I would be far away from home, but at least I know how to cook a hearty sinigang during cold and rainy days, or fry lumpiang shanghai to pair with tinto de verano in summer.

I prepared the practical things, like ensuring that I have good health insurance coverage, and some thick jackets for when the weather becomes colder.

However, these things I could NOT prepare for:

• I had to go back to the ayuntamiento thrice for my empadron
• Experiencing my first winter and everything that comes with it
• Shifting my mentality from Philippine Peso (PHP) to Euros (EUR), and trust me, this is a very big jump
• The loneliness, which brings us to my next point.

2

Loneliness comes in waves, sometimes in small splashes, and sometimes in tsunamis.

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Filipino culture has always been centred on community. And as a friendly neighbourhood Cody, I knew people in my barangay (the local community), and I can walk 20 minutes and be at my childhood friends’ houses.

Those 20 minutes turned into 26 hours of flight across the globe, not to mention that a one-way ticket costs at least 500 EUR.

They always show moving abroad as something fun, brave, and adventurous. And it’s true. Living abroad has so many new experiences to offer. But what they don’t often show is how lonely it could be, too.

Barcelona: A classic case of international cities

Barcelona is a great, multicultural place. It’s filled with cuisines from around the world and people from all corners of the Earth.

What they failed to mention is that it is also a transitory city. People come and go all the time.

Which leads me to my next challenge: finding friends.

You won’t run out of people in the cities. There will be so many acquaintances. So many people with similar interests, whether fitness, reading, or even philosophical discussions. I joined book clubs, language exchanges, and attended Meetup events.

Meeting new people is very easy.

But people you trust enough to ask for help from? Now that is a different discussion. When you are alone in a foreign country, you need safe people you can depend on.

Finding my people

I’m so glad that Filipino people flock together wherever we are.

My first friends in Barcelona are Filipinos. I attended events at the Philippine Consulate of Barcelona, and there, I would meet new people. I’ve also attended independently organised networking events (shoutout to the hardworking Kaipitana of Barcelona).

I have also met good people from the Meetups I have been to. People whom I bake banana bread for, discuss my personal decisions with, and rant to when life gets heavy.

It took some time, but now I can honestly say that I know people whom I can call at 3 am.

These people who would text, “Cody, I’m cooking some delicious omelette with rice. Do you want to come?” on that one night, I was crying my eyes out, and the only thing I wanted to do was take the next flight back.

I celebrated the holidays with them last December. One hosted in their flat, and gave us books as gifts and cocoa bars to make hot chocolate with. People who are also not afraid to call me out and talk some sense into me.

It took some time, but now I can honestly say that I know people whom I can call at 3 am.

The people back home

Here’s another truth: Just because I moved does not mean that I lose my connection with people back home.

It does take more effort. It’s harder to schedule calls when the time difference is 6 to 7 hours, but there is something so meaningful about people intentionally overcoming time zones.

One of my closest friends in the Philippines sent me a cake on my birthday last year. She is the same person who asks me if she could send food on my bad days, too as her way of helping me feel better.

I remember talking with friends who made plans to visit Barcelona (and some actually did!), or even meeting me halfway across the globe.

Some friends call for 15 minutes just to check in with me. Some do video calls for two hours and catch me up on their lives, too. I’m so, so grateful.

I don’t think I’m generally “lucky” about a lot of things, but when it comes to friends, I do think I’m probably the luckiest.

3

I missed out on a lot of personal events, and sometimes that’s not okay.

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Losing my lola

Losing my grandmother is possibly one of the greatest losses in my life. She passed away in July, just a month after I graduated from my master's.

I could not go home as I was processing my visa. Logistically, it was not easy to go out of Europe. Economically, the flight prices were astronomical. It was summer, and everyone was booking flights.

On Sunday, she was brought to the hospital, and on Friday, she was gone. It was all so sudden for me.

My grandmother raised me, and I lived in her house since I was ten years old. She was my parent who guided me in everything, and not being able to go home for her was a different kind of grief.

From the outside looking in

As I created new experiences for myself here in Barcelona, people back home also went on with their lives.

It’s beautiful and painful at the same time.

My baby cousins are now attending elementary school. I used to take naps with them in the afternoons.

Life did not stop for anybody, and that’s a good thing. But sometimes, I just felt like an outsider looking in.

My brother is now almost old enough for university. I used to do K-pop dance covers with him when he was seven years old.

Another cousin is almost graduating from university. We used to fight a lot when we were playing outside with other kids.

Life did not stop for anybody, and that’s a good thing. But sometimes, I just felt like an outsider looking in.

Sometimes, it’s not okay

We live in a culture that is constantly pushing us toward positivity. But sometimes, we have to be honest with ourselves.

Missing out on my grandmother’s final moments was not okay.

It’s one of those things that sits with you. There is just no way to reframe it to make it feel okay.

But life – in its own cruel and funny way – keeps going forward. Seasons changed, even when parts of me felt like they were standing still.

4

Winter means wearing three layers, having coughs, and sunset at 4 PM.

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There’s a time in November when everyone starts coughing inside the metro. That’s when you know that winter is arriving.

My friends saw me in only one coat during the whole of winter. I found this dark blue coat in Uniqlo’s Kids’ Section at L’Illa Diagonal, and it has got me through two winters so far.

Thicker clothes and slower drying

Other Europeans I have met said Barcelona does not have a “real winter”. But for me, a tropical island girl experiencing winter for the first time, it freaked me out. What do you mean by "the sun sets at 4 PM and rises at 8 AM the next morning"?

Aside from the Spanish healthcare collapsing, another unexpected downside of winter is the slow drying of clothes.

Growing up, I would just hang clothes outside the house, and the ever-present Philippine sun would dry them within the day. Here, clothes would take two whole days to dry, sometimes even three for jeans and thicker clothes.

I had to learn how to wash coats, and on the rainy days of February, I had to wait one whole week for my sneakers to dry completely.

Urea is the answer

During my first winter, I saw the skin on my legs so dry I was afraid it was going to crack. I have never experienced such dry conditions, having lived my whole life in the humidity of the tropics.

Mind you, I was already moisturising every day due to having a sensitive skin type, and it still was not enough. I had to order a special moisturiser with urea to survive winter. Thankfully, they are very affordable on Amazon.

But, we have churros + hot chocolate

Aside from the short daylight hours and the cold, winter is not so bad. Especially since the holidays are celebrated right at the start of it.

Winter is a good time to have walking conversations with friends, too.

By the last week of November, Christmas markets are set up in front of the Catedral de Barcelona. European streetlights give off that warm glow in the streets, too.

At night, I would snuggle under warm duvets (sometimes double duvets) and fall asleep after drinking hot chamomile tea. On nights when I feel especially cold, I would also hug a hot compress to sleep.

On the weekends, I would walk around and see people lining up for churros y chocolate caliente. Winter is a good time to have walking conversations with friends, too.

This past winter, my friends and I would walk along La Rambla and just talk about life. Barcelona is too chaotic and crowded in the summer, so winter is a good opportunity to do this.

5

Nobody is coming to save you, but people will be there while you save yourself.

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This is possibly one of the hardest lessons I have ever had to learn while adjusting in a different country.

In the Philippines, there is a level of expectation when it comes to helping family, so there is always a ‘safety net’. But Europe is a totally different world, and I discovered this the hard way.

The friends along the way

During particularly bad moments, I was surprised to find only a handful of friends from the Philippines keeping in touch with me. Maintaining these bonds takes immense effort, especially when fighting a six-hour time difference.

The harsh truth I’ve come to realise is that so many relationships rely heavily on physical proximity. Quick meetups after university lectures turn into meticulously scheduled phone calls — and eventually, those turn into unanswered check-in messages as everyday life simply gets in the way.

Uprooting your entire life to move to a different country is never easy. Add the daunting task of making real friends from scratch into that mix, and it becomes overwhelming.

I’ve always considered myself an extrovert, someone who could easily strike up a conversation and make a friend out of anybody. But navigating social nuances in a third language? That’s where the difficulty level bumped up from Very Hard straight to Maniac.

Even so, against all the odds and quiet evenings, I’ve managed to build a small circle of genuine friends. The kind of people I know, with total certainty, I could call at 3:00 AM during moments of distress.

In a city where everything feels temporary, I feel truly blessed to have found these rare, deep connections.

Comfort zone who?

One good thing about being a Filipino is we have a community-reliant lifestyle. Being part of a collective has always been part of our culture, but there are also disadvantages to that.

Having a constant community to rely on and share the emotional and practical load of daily life could easily become comfortable. Everything is a ‘group project’.

Once I stepped out of the airport in Madrid, I felt this sinking feeling that said, “Actually, it’s all up to me now”. I have the sole responsibility of finding a flat, navigating the complex Spanish bureaucracy and making big decisions. No one else can take the steps for me.

As I have mentioned earlier, I moved out of my grandmother’s house eight months before I moved to Spain. What I didn’t mention was that the dormitory was only a 15-minute walk away.

Even so, the separation from my childhood home has made me grow. I bought one of those small cookers on Lazada for PHP 300/€5 and practised cooking. I learned how to cook all my favourite foods.

Little did I know, that tiny cooker was training me for my first tiny kitchen in Barcelona, where cooking my favourite Filipino comfort foods would become my ultimate cure for homesickness.

Don’t get me wrong, going to restaurants is also an option, but nothing takes away the joy of pouring Sinigang Mix into my cooking pot, and smelling home.

I discovered who I was outside of my family home. Moving abroad strips away the familiarity of everything you’ve ever known, but it replaces it with something invaluable: absolute self-reliance.

It teaches you that even when everything is no longer a 'group project,' you are more than capable of handling the blueprint of your own life.

The strength in saving yourself

I learned how to disassemble and assemble stand fans, build my own furniture and organise my room multiple times until it started feeling like my home.

I learned how to bake banana breads, cookies, and other desserts that my family doesn’t even know I could make. I learned to concoct homemade fly traps during summer, and to manage humidity throughout the year.

I learned to make friends with people from cultures massively different from mine. This has expanded me, learning about their perspectives and their impressions of the world. I quickly learned that our differences aren’t barriers, they are invitations to grow.

Yes, it is all up to me, but that is such a good thing.

When you sit at a table with people from all corners of the globe, you realise that whilst your upbringings look completely different, the core human desires for connection, growth, and belonging are exactly the same.

Being in Europe has expanded my perspectives, dismantled beliefs, and learned new things that I could not have learned if I had stayed in the Philippines.

Yes, it is all up to me, but that is such a good thing. Relying on myself felt so overwhelming and daunting, but hey, it has made me realise how reliable I am.

Looking back on my time in Barcelona so far, I realise that moving abroad doesn't just change your location; it completely dismantles and rebuilds who you are.

You will lose things along the way — moments back home and the ease of physical proximity with the people you love.

But in return, you gain something invaluable: absolute self-reliance, global perspectives, and a small, cherished circle of friends who become your sanctuary thousands of miles away.