The song “Space Oddity” by David Bowie is one of his most emblematic works and its history is deeply intertwined with space exploration, late 60s pop culture, and Bowie’s own artistic development.
The song was written and recorded in 1969, a key year in human history due to the moon landing (the Apollo 11 mission).
Bowie was inspired by both this historic event and the film: “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Stanley Kubrick (1968), hence the wordplay in the title: “Space Oddity”.
It has also been interpreted as a metaphor for personal isolation, emotional disconnection, and existential fear, themes that Bowie would explore throughout his career.
The main character, Major Tom, is an astronaut who loses contact with Earth and is left floating in space, which can be understood as a poetic image of alienation.
A feeling of isolation, emptiness, or disconnection from oneself or the environment. We can feel:
- Loss of sense of identity
- Lack of belonging
- Feeling of not having control over our life
Many years ago, when I launched myself as a freelancer (more than 10 years ago) seeking different economic and work conditions, I was convinced that I could achieve it; to make a living from the digital world, but I felt emotional ups and downs that conditioned me a lot.
It mixed: insecurity, impostor syndrome, times of prosperity and scarcity, etc. And of course, that feeling of lack of belonging and isolation, which evokes so much that wonderful Bowie song.
In 2016, I felt lost, isolated, and a certain Juan Hernando arrives in Pontevedra to found the first WordPress group. I’ve written a lot on this blog about it and how much it helped me at that time.
I gained role models, friendships, self-confidence, a “community” that supported me and helped me grow on all levels.
When I went to the first WordCamp Europe in Berlin, in 2019, I couldn’t believe that atmosphere, and it gave me a lesson in humility.
We in Spain thought we knew what WordPress was and what that open source spirit meant, but it wasn’t until you see it for yourself at an international level, the magnitude of the movement globally. Traveling always teaches a lot, if we are attentive.
At that moment I realized that our small community in Pontevedra is just a grain of sand.
The community, at an international level, is an infinite beach of people who believe in and share your principles, generating a second family of wonderful friendships that can help you grow in all unimaginable areas.
It’s something I’ll never forget and will always be with me.
I don’t care if in the future WP has no users, or is replaced by another technology, or if they want to kill it in any WP-drama. What it gave me in the field of human relationships is irreplaceable and immeasurable. ❤️
That’s why we’re still there, so many years later; I always quote John Maeda with his quote:
“I realized that PHP in the WordPress universe meant ‘People Helping People’, given the way each local community welcomes anyone who wants to learn computing, with no strings attached, no costs to get involved as a contributor. In open source, the software is the community and not just the code”
John Maeda
In the podcast “How I Built This with Guy Raz”, he interviews Matt Mullenweg and, although the interview is already some time old (2022), the genesis of our beloved CMS in the words of its founder is very interesting.
It evokes the long journey to the present, and how much an idea can change people’s lives.
The Journey and the Contributor Day
Just like in the year of Berlin, the Galicians at WCEU started our journey. We had our accommodation booked almost a year in advance. That’s the level of commitment for our European pilgrimage!
This year, a new member and friend joined us, who I’m sure after his pleasant experience, won’t stop attending, the great Daniel Pereira (Charrúa) from the A Coruña community.
Although Juan and Carlos Longarela wanted to get ahead of us by a day, the rest of the Galicians met on a wonderful direct flight from Santiago de Compostela to Basel, Switzerland. We don’t always have that luck.
From Pontevedra, Jorge González and I started our journey, and we coincided with the wonderful Esther de Cózar, one of my personal discoveries from this WC. I hadn’t had the opportunity to talk to her so much (in other editions) and getting to know her on a personal level has been really enjoyable.
Esther is the type of person who brightens your day and you know that every time we meet at these gatherings, we’ll have good conversations and laughs. 😇
We also met David Cuesta and his family, organizer of the WP group in Santiago, who have been faithful to the event for a couple of editions.
Direct flight, arrival at the love suite ❤️, as every year, with surprises and anecdotes.
This year, the limitation of only one set of keys, which if lost would cost us 700 Swiss francs, gave us a lot to play with and allowed us to extend the parties longer than some would have liked.
But it’s always worth it!
The first lunch set a general trend for this WC that didn’t go unnoticed, the fact that all the culinary offerings in the venues were always international: Italy, Asia, Middle East, but Switzerland hardly featured in these options. The Spanish community is easily won over with food, it’s something important in our culture, so the odious comparison with the edition in Athens, where the food was simply sublime, always comes up.
Running to meet with my community team as we had to finish organizing the tables and signs for the contributor day, my favorite day of any WordCamp. By the way, I’m now completing 3 years as an organizer, something that’s worth every second.
This year I only knew one of the organizers from my team personally, so I was very eager to put a face to my lead organizer: Fotis Routsis, and people like Sumit Singh and Shiva Shanker Bhatta, who made incredible journeys to be here: India and Nepal, respectively. Dennis Hipp from Germany, now a Duolingo buddy 😉
I want to thank Fotis, because he did a commendable job, I think he took on a lot of responsibility for the group, besides, this year many people dropped out along the way, so double merit that he knew how to hold the fort, and has managed to organize a wonderful CD, community booth, whose improvisation with the signatures has generated a very nice community space and a super interesting debate in WC Café regarding the future (excuse the redundancy) of “five for the future”.
Our TV table is not very popular, but it allowed us to onboard new people to the team, as well as reinstate the monthly meeting which, hopefully, will allow us to improve small details of the workflow.
This way we ensure the documentation of all our events and that our knowledge is digitally stored on that great video and learning platform that is WP TV.
I took the opportunity to record many people, a request from my communication team for WordCamp Galicia, especially Carla Pumutxa who is doing a wonderful job promoting this union of WC Vigo and WC Pontevedra to make a true WordCamp Galicia with all the love it deserves.
Wonderful, Juan, Carlos, Jorge, and Dani, who finished publishing the website that same day to start ticket sales.
In our community team, especially Fotis, there was some concern about how the CD would turn out.
There was some discouragement, we struggled to get table leaders for some working groups, and in the end, everything turned out perfectly, with a lot of work, high participation with 640 participants, 33 table leaders, enjoying collaborating, sharing, and hugging each other, as it’s on this beautiful day when the European WordPress festival begins.
Thanks to Juan and Yordan Soares for stepping up at the last moment for two key tables: community and support, which are usually among the most crowded.
And look at the numbers, not just for the CD, 2,082 tickets sold, people from 84 countries, more than 60 speakers, 4 workshops.
That first day is usually the Codeable party, a party I attend religiously every year as “Carlos’s wife” (with apologies to Marga) and where the participants already know me as such 😉
I loved the place they chose, a spot on the river where you could see 3 countries: Switzerland, France, and Germany. Delicious food, great friendships, sharing wonderful debates, from WP topics, of course, to the future of freelancers, retirement, investments, cryptocurrencies. We covered it all that night.
I love the conversations at these events, where we free ourselves from any prejudice, laugh, and unwind, enjoying knowing that, like every year, we are privileged to be able to enjoy these moments.
Conferences and Parties
Second day of the WC already with the talks and the famous opening. Juan and I at the venue early, him in his mentoring role, although he’s no longer a responsible organizer, he can’t conceive starting the WC without being there.
In Pontevedra (now Galicia, you’ll see how he’ll be the first to arrive at the University, an hour before the rest of the volunteers).
I had a day very focused on being at the community booth, talking to people, taking photos, of the wappuu which, like every year, attracts curious looks trying to understand what the heck we’re doing there.
Taking a tour of the organizers’ stands, without whose effort none of this would make sense, so we must always thank them for their commitment to this event, which makes our ecosystem grow each year.
The organizers’ dinner was that day. Right in the stadium, I loved the location and the detail of the foosball tables (where I had fun to no end).
Did you know we invented it in Galicia? I mentioned it that day, but they thought we Galicians were crazy, I’ll leave the reference (for anyone who wants to check: Alexandre Campos). I had fun and laughed at unsuspected levels with the foosball (no preliminaries!).
Very excited to see, as every year, great friends like Celi Garoe, Nahuai Badiola, the great David Pérez, the omnipresent photographers: Weiko (Roberto Vázquez) and Nilo Vélez, Paco Marchante, Estela Rueda, the wonderful Ohia (Coleen), the Mowomo team: Pedro Crespo, Víctor Sáenz, Paco Toledo from Join Chat, Paula Carmona, Remkus de Vries, Fernando Tellado, Rocío Valdivia, Ximena, Lena Inurrieta, Amadeu Arderiu and his team from Sirvelia.
The photo with my good friend Ángel Zinsel and me to remember our great friend Fernando López, who, being an organizer, couldn’t come at the last moment. We missed him a lot!
I was enthusiastic about meeting and integrating my two Greek brothers into the Spanish community: María Pappas and Akis Bakakos (Gavoto!).
I had moments of very special connection with this couple, where we reflected on life, parents, traumas, even the Annapurna. I hope to see them in other years because I loved that connection I made with them.
And from the Latin American community, I was blown away by the energy of Vanessa Martínez and Katia Dávalos. Lovely! I’m sure we’ll keep seeing each other at these events.
I’m sure I’m missing some people I can’t mention, there are so many of you, but you know I try every year.
This year I saw few talks. As always, I was excited to support our Spanish speakers who gave incredible talks:
- Héctor de Prada from Modular DS, gave a wonderful talk about meetups and local communities with very interesting actionable advice
- Our great friend Nacho (Ignacio Márquez), who celebrated his birthday on stage, giving a talk about micro-communities. Very inspiring
- The great Maylén García, excellent talk (about the footer!) it’s amazing what she got out of that topic.
- And the talk on WordPress automation with AI by Marcel Tannich, who, although not Spanish but Austrian by birth, I treat as such, since he has lived here for many years and is a very interesting developer.
In addition to these talks, something I love about WCEU is being able to meet industry leaders. In Berlin, Fernando Tellado introduced me to Aleyda Solís. This time I was able to meet John Muller, Search Advocate from the Google team, whom I could thank for his podcast: “Search off the record” which gives us very interesting episodes to understand how Google works from an SEO perspective.
Additionally, he answered some of my questions about indexing issues, and the problems they’ve had for years; although it wasn’t a direct answer, very elegant as usual ;-), but I appreciated his honesty and willingness to answer all the questions from the audience of his talk on “Myths, questions and answers about appearing on Google”.
I had interesting conversations with his team about their plugin: Site Kit at the team’s booth.
from the official WCEU photography team (Flickr).
The conversation with Matt and Mary Hubbard. Due to all the controversies of the past year, there was a lot of expectation about it; but I think it was a pleasant session without many surprises.
Also, I liked seeing Mary up close and seeing what she conveyed to me. I get the impression that she’s a professional with a very interesting character, very willing to listen and who can bring interesting things to the project on an international level. Let’s hope so!
The wonderful Hostinger team for the second year invited us, the table leaders of the Contributor Day, to a very special dinner that I enjoyed a lot.
It’s always a joy to share time with Emma Young and Gustė Cibulskytė, they are lovely and I have a lot of fun with them. Plus, Juan and I arrived early this time, so double points. 😉
In the evenings, the traditional Yoast pride party, the after party giving it all and even, we were able to do some sightseeing which I felt bad about going to Basel and not being able to walk its streets and various points along the river.
Earlier I was telling you the story of WordPress and how, since its birth, it has been closely linked with blogs and with the democratization of content publishing on the internet.
Therefore, I fulfill the tradition of writing about the WordCamp that I’m most excited about (after the Galician one, of course). These reviews help me capture my feelings and reflections on an event that changes us in each edition.
At the opening of the event, they shared a beautiful video made by the lead organizers: Laura Sacco, Steve Mosby and Uros Tasic, which I leave here:
Un año más de experiencias maravillosas y un viaje de buenas amistades.
See you in Krakow, Poland in 2026. I leave a mosaic of some random photos from the trip, and oddities that I couldn’t define in the rest of the post, like the photo of the truck after the social dinner.
Long life and prosperity to WordPress!
NOTES: I created the featured image thanks to Kostas Fryganiotis and one of his photos from the official Flickr album. And Juan Hernando published a very nice review: WordCamp Europe 2025: What a wonder!
