This Saturday, my friends María and Miguel celebrated their farewell party; after eighteen years of adventures in Ireland, they´ve decided to move back to Spain, to continue living adventures there. And the venue chosen for the party couldn´t be more fitting: the Market Bar, which is exactly where we met and formed our friends group shortly after arriving in Dublin.

It all started thanks to a website called Spaniards, a pioneer community of Spanish people around the world created by our friend and former college classmate Eneko Alonso (thanks Eneko!), back in 2005. The website had forums for different countries, and the forum for Ireland got very successful, with high participation and nice vibes, so at some point, somebody thought of organizing a meet-up in a Dublin bar.

The first ever monthly Spaniards meet-up in Market Bar took place in November 2006. I remember it well because I was heavily pregnant with Irene, our eldest daughter; in fact, we missed the second meet-up due to Irene being just a newborn baby. But then we attended the third one, and from then onwards, we were there almost every time, including the special meet-up we organized for St. Patrick´s Day parade in March 2007.

I remember I met Miguel on that St. Patrick´s Day, and then I met María at the following meet-up. Our approach was basically to show up at the meeting point on the specified date and time, and start talking to other Spanish people, often introducing ourselves with our usernames in the Spaniards website, so that we could recognize each other: cornflakegirl, bigfredi, triskitas, miguev, flekiboy... Mine was, of course, binarybea.

It´s possible be that none of this sounds weird to you, because nowadays it´s completely normal to meet people online. But believe me: back then, this was highly unconventional. Thankfully, we were all on the geeky side so we went for it, and we were also incredibly lucky, because those never-ending meet-ups (where we talked for hours and hours) resulted not only in many good friendships, but also in one or two couples 🙂

It is true that, over the years, our group has become somewhat scattered: some of us stayed in Ireland, others made a jump to other countries like Switzerland, the United Kingdom or the United States, others went back to Spain... But it´s also true that other new friends have arrived during the past few years, new members for our little group of Spaniards.

It´s wonderful to be able to connect with like minded people, especially when you´re in a strange environment. Unfortunately, the Spaniards website no longer exists, but luckily, there are many other options: Facebook groups, Instagram groups and other platforms where the Emerald Isle´s new inhabitants can share information and make friends.

Now María and Miguel are swapping their Irish adventure for a new Spanish one. Good luck guys! Ádh mór!

Adventure is worthwhile in itself.

Amelia Earhart