"I was supposed to leave for three days. It turned into three years. On February 21, 2022, the eve of the war [Russia's invasion of Ukraine], my partner and I flew to Madrid for a romantic weekend. My 17-year-old son stayed in Ukraine. I didn't believe war was coming; even [President Volodymyr] Zelensky was joking at the time, telling us that May would, as always in our country, be the month of barbecues. I remember walking the streets of Madrid that day, suddenly overcome with panic as I read the news. It was as if anxiety caught up with me all at once. In the middle of the night, a friend called: He was under bombardment in Kyiv. My son and my mother were there, too.

Everything then became surreal; I wandered like a zombie through the Spanish capital, checking the news on my phone every three minutes, bursting into tears whenever I saw a Ukrainian flag, desperately trying to convince my loved ones to leave Kyiv. But the bombs were falling, and everything was so dangerous.

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