I´m just back in Dublin today after a few days in Cáceres, my home town. I´ve been lucky enough to spend this week with my mum, as well as my siblings, siblings-in-law and some of my nephews and nieces.

My colleagues at work always refer to these trips as "going back home to Spain". And they´re partially right: I am indeed Spanish, I was born and raised in Cáceres, a big portion of my family lives there, and every time I go back, I feel at home.

But it´s also true that nowadays my home is in Dublin, or more specifically, in Adamstown. It´s here in Ireland where I live and work since 2005, where my daughters were born and where they´re growing up. Here is the family I myself have formed, and the home I have built for us all.

And while we´re at it, there´s actually a third place where I also feel at home: Madrid, where my mother is from. I remember we used to visit my grandparents there twice a year, back when I was a child. And then later on, as an adult, I lived and worked in Madrid for three years, after finishing college in Cáceres and before getting married and relocating to Dublin.

But then, where is "home" for me?

I guess it depends on how I look at it.

My mother always says something like "one is not from where one is born, but from where one grazes" (weird sentence in English, I know; in Spanish it rhymes, so it sounds better: "uno no es de donde nace, sino de donde pace"); for this reason, she considers herself "cacereña" (from Cáceres), despite having been born and raised in Madrid. I like this idea of embracing the place where you live and making it part of your identity, but I don´t believe that has to automatically mean rejecting other places that may have also been important.

On the other hand, I once read or heard somewhere that we as emigrants never feel completely at home anywhere, because there´s always something missing, something that we miss from that other place where we are not. I also find this idea very interesting, and I can see how that could end up happening... But, what if we turned it around? What if we chose to feel at home in all of those meaningful places, instead of none of them?

What if we decided to enjoy what we do have at any given moment, instead of complaining about what we don´t have?

The conclusion, at least for me, is clear: Cáceres is home. Madrid is home. Dublin (Adamstown) is home. I have family and friends in all of them. I feel at ease in all of them. They are all part of my life, and they complement each other.

What about you? Where do you feel most at home, and why?