Logs of Love Jan 2025
Spain, Madrid
This January, our research team—Project Leaders Saida and Zita, along with graduate students Andrew and Jaymes—had the incredible opportunity to spend three weeks in Madrid, Spain. They spent their time in Spain fully immersing themselves in the culture of love in everyday life for the Spanish people while collecting data for the project. We are beyond grateful for the warm welcome and support from our Spain collaborators at the Complutense University of Madrid, especially Professor Pandelis Perakakis and mentee (newly minted PhD) Carmen Goicoechea, whose expertise and assistance have been invaluable.
During our time in Madrid, we conducted 14 focus groups and 54 interviews for a total of 100 participants from diverse backgrounds spanning across the lifespan, genders, relationship preferences, sexual orientations, occupations, and regions of Spain. We gathered rich insights into how love is experienced and expressed in the everyday life of Spanish people. Moreover, as part of our fieldwork we fully immersed ourselves in the Spanish culture, which included local plazas, delicious food, the city's breathtaking sights, and observing soccer (fútbol) fans cheering for their favorite team.
As January comes to an end, our team is heading back home to begin the next phase of the project. February will be dedicated to transcribing and translating our audio data and eventually preparing for qualitative coding and analysis. We’re excited to dive deeper into our findings and share what we’ve learned in the coming months.
Stay tuned—there’s so much more to come!
Some (of the many) pictures we took while in Madrid, Spain! 📸
