For 20 centuries, the Mediterranean has witnessed everything: empires rising and falling, cultures mixing, wars destroying, trade uniting. The Romans called it Mare Nostrum, "our sea," as if they could own it. But the Mediterranean belongs to no one. It belongs to everyone and to no one.

Centuries later, Joan Manuel Serrat sang to it with a melancholy that only those who have lived near the sea can understand. "Mediterráneo" is not just a song. It's a feeling. It's the nostalgia for something that never left, but always seems distant.

I was not born by the sea. I am a mountain man. I grew up accustomed to walking through forests full of mushrooms and berries in autumn, and snow in winter. The silence of the mountains was my home. The smell of wet earth, my perfume. The snowy peaks, my horizon.

But one day, in spring, I decided I wanted to visit the sea.

I don't know what I expected to find. Perhaps just curiosity. Perhaps an escape. But what I found was magic.

I saw its calm. That calm that makes you believe the world has stopped. That surface smooth as a mirror, where sky and water merge.

I saw its fury. Those waves that crash against the coast with rage, as if the sea wanted to remind you that it's not yours, that it never will be.

I saw its people. Fishermen who leave at dawn. Tourists seeking sun. Old people who stare at the horizon as if waiting for something that never comes.

And it trapped me.

It trapped me in such a way that I've been living beside it for almost 30 years.

Thirty years looking at that same horizon. Thirty years listening to the sound of the waves. Thirty years watching sunsets like this

This sunset is not from a postcard. It's real. It's the Mediterranean I know. With its beauty, yes, but also with its chimneys in the background. Because today's Mediterranean is not just nature. It's also industry, tourism, pollution, hope, and despair.

It's a sea that has seen too much. And it's still there, imperturbable, as if nothing we do could change it.

Sometimes I think about the mountains. About the silence. About the snow. About the forests where I grew up.

But then I look at the sea, and I know I couldn't go back.

Because the sea doesn't just trap you. It changes you.

It teaches you that calm and storm are part of the same thing. That beauty and destruction coexist. That the horizon is always there, but you never reach it.

Serrat was right. The Mediterranean is not just a place. It's a feeling.

And I, a mountain man who one day decided to visit the sea, have been feeling that feeling for 30 years.

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If you feel inspired, I invite you to do what Serrat says: from Algeciras to Istanbul, visit any of its beaches and you'll know why it traps you.

Visit the Costa Brava, its hidden coves and small corners where time seems to stand still.

Visit the Ionian Sea, between Naples and Sicily, where history breathes in every stone.

Visit the Adriatic Sea, with its crystal-clear waters and villages that look like they came out of a painting.

Visit northern Cyprus or Greece, where the blue of the sea merges with the blue of the sky.

And then you'll understand.

You'll understand why the Mediterranean traps you.

You'll understand why Serrat sang to it like that.

You'll understand why a mountain man like me has been unable to leave for 30 years.

Because the Mediterranean is not just a sea.

It's a feeling that, once you feel it, never leaves you.

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