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It feels like returning after a long holiday but it wasn´t me who was a tourist elsewhere and came back home. Other people were tourists here and I stopped going on my early morning walks when the streets were taken over by drunk tourists and the beach had turned into a party area. Today the morning silence has returned and although the beach bars are still there - they pop up in spring and disappear in the fall - and lifeless bodies are scattered on the sand as if they washed up on the shore in the night, it is quiet and and the sand is free of trash. The big ugly sign is new. An enormous cigarette butt with the puzzling text "don´t leave me in this mess" dominates the view. A different kind of polution.

I don´t see the sunrise but it must have happened because the sky is turning lighter, from dark grey to light grey. A blanket of clouds. The sea is stale blue and doesn´t care what is happening on its shore. Two big basalt blocks sticking out of the waves have been transformed into rubic cubes. A cormorant sits on one of the other blocks that has been painted bright pink and spreads its wings to let them dry in the wind.

The last photo I took of the sea is dated June 30. The meter of shame wasn´t working that day but a few days earlier it had displayed the number 857. Today the number is 1549. It almost doubled. In the last two monts almost 700 people drowned in the Mediterranean.

I sit on the sand. I look at the man grooming his dog. At the elderly couple swimming. At the treasure hunter with the metal detector. It is windy.

I am the first one to arrive at the terrace but soon after I sit down the others make their way slowly across the market square. They wear carefully chosen dresses, bright red lipstick, they look like they just came back from the hairdresser. The slowest ones, the ones behind their walking aids, are being greeted from afar by the ones who are already seated, "hola guapa!" They are beauties indeed, with their amazing wrinkles like rivers running through a landscape. I sometimes wonder if they recognise me. I am not here as often as they are, which is daily, always looking as if they dressed up for a celebration, but I am a regular here.

The waiter brings me my café con leche and calls me cariño. The sun appears.