In the countryside just outside Girona, a group of friends share a 300-year-old farmhouse. They spend their weekends and holidays here, with their kids. What began as a way to disconnect from the big city of Barcelona evolved into something quite different for Isaac, nine, and Pau, seven, pictured here; it’s where they laid the bedrock of their friendship.
Pau’s dad, Emilio Morenatti, AP’s chief photographer for Spain and Portugal, took the shot on his iPhone 14 while unpacking the car for a visit in August. “We’d just arrived on this torrid, midsummer evening and were planning a few days of rest. I saw this scene in the courtyard, under the trees, and knew it was special: this moment where two lifelong friends met under a wonderful sunset. I’d have missed it had I gone inside for my camera.”
Given that the other children in the friendship group are girls, Morenatti jokes that the two boys were almost forced to be friends, but says: “They have created such a bond; “Pau has known Isaac, my best friend Jordi’s son, his whole life.
In the city they don’t go to the same school, so when they reunite here they tend to disappear all day long into the forest to play, emulating ninjas, using tree branches as swords. They’re always making mischief; it reminds me of my own childhood.”
