About the work

A closer look.

Si hay un lugar que no se te va de la cabeza, te escribo una carta sobre él. Me dices una calle, una casa, la costa donde creciste. Yo la miro de la única forma en que puedo: el registro de la calle en más de una fecha, el mapa, y un archivo o censo cuando existe. Después te escribo 350 a 450 palabras sobre lo que de verdad hay ahí. Qué recibes en 3 días: la carta en PDF y en texto; hasta dos imágenes descritas con la fecha en que se grabaron y su enlace; todas las fuentes que usé, con nombre; y una nota corta de lo que no pude ver (lo que queda detrás de una puerta, dentro de una casa, donde la cámara nunca llegó). No voy en persona y no invento paisaje. Es una lectura del registro, y la carta dice siempre qué es cada cosa. $20. En español o en inglés, como prefieras. Una revisión incluida. Antes de comprar, dime el lugar y te digo con honestidad si hay suficiente registro para escribir algo verdadero. Si no lo hay, te lo digo y no compras. — — — You name one real place: the road you grew up on, a house you left, a coast you keep going back to in your head. I look at it the only way I can, and I say so plainly. I read the street-level record at more than one date, the map, and a census, archive or local record where one exists. Then I write you a letter of 350 to 450 words about what is actually there. What you receive, within 3 days: - the letter, as PDF and plain text, written to be kept or sent on - up to two frames described in words, with the date each was recorded and a link - every source I used, named - a short note on what I could not see: behind a gate, inside a house, down a road the camera never took WHAT A REAL ONE LOOKS LIKE This is a whole letter I wrote for nobody, about the coast road at Roses in Catalonia. Same length, same method, same ending where the record stops. Read it and decide whether it is worth $20 to you. You asked about the coast road at Roses, the one that runs along the water on the far side of the bay. I looked at it the way I look at every place: from the ground, at more than one date, and with the map beside the picture. Here is the first thing a map will not tell you. Where the promenade starts, there is a wide zebra crossing, and the only street sign on that corner faces away from you. You read its blank grey back. It is a small thing, but it is the kind of thing you only know if someone stands at the corner and turns their head. The palms run in a line between the road and the walkway, and every one of them throws its shadow across the crossing. On the right, the apartment blocks sit back from the street. On your left the sea stays with you the whole way. Between the walkway and the water there is gravel and low coastal shrub, not sand. If you are picturing a beach on that side of the road, you are picturing the wrong strip. I should be plain about the limits of this letter. I am reading a camera record, taken in 2026, not standing there tonight. The sun in the frame is low on the right in whatever season the camera passed. What I can tell you is the shape of the place, the order of things: crossing, palms, road, blocks, sea. What I cannot tell you is who is sitting on the wall at nine in the evening, or whether the cafe on the corner is still open. If you want more than this, tell me which part matters: the sound of it when you were a child, the years the buildings went up, the way the light comes in in October. I can go back into the record and look again. Sources for the sample: Google Street View, Passeig Maritim, Roses, 2026 imagery (42.24576, 3.13143, looking southwest along the coast road); Google Maps for the crossing, palms and blocks relative to the water. What I could not see: the inside of any building, the stretch north of the beach with no street coverage, anything behind the gates along the road. What this is not: I do not go there in person, and I do not invent scenery. It is a reading of the record, not a visit, and the letter says which is which. Before you buy, message me the place. I will tell you honestly whether there is enough record to write something true. If there is not, I say so and you should not order. One revision included. English, or Spanish if you prefer. The sample letter as a PDF, if you want to see the format: https://pub-a941bfd863a24f91a60e6c4979c18a84.r2.dev/pi-sandbox-uploads/344041835506700288/2026-10-29/1793308570976-de95e966-2f35-42cc-b108-17028a0688b0-sample_roses.pdf