Getting Licensed in Barcelona: A Story of Expats and Paperwork

Boats, Bars, and Bureaucracy
This was a piece about people obtaining different kinds of licences in Barcelona—a boat licence, a driving licence, a bar licence, and even one for importing specialist meat products. On the surface, it sounds like a dry subject, but it was surprisingly entertaining.

Snapshots of Expat Life
What made the assignment interesting was the people—each from a different background, each navigating Spanish bureaucracy in their own way. These stories are always a reminder that thriving in a foreign city is very possible, and that sometimes red tape is just part of the ride.

Why I Love These Shoots
I enjoy this type of work because it gets me meeting a broad mix of characters, and usually in environments I wouldn’t otherwise find myself in. There’s something grounding and oddly uplifting about seeing how people carve out lives here doing things as ordinary (and occasionally obscure) as licensing meat or captaining a boat.