Three years ago, I visited Montevideo, Uruguay – a city and country where I grew up from age six – with my adult daughter. She had only been there once, at age four, so there was much to show and rediscover.

One of the strongest landmarks in my memory was the Montevideo Central Market, very close to Independence Square with its geometric lawns, oval fountains, and the monument to Artigas rising from a tall red‑granite base. The pigeons loved him. They came from their home at the baroque gâteau of the Salvo Palace and settled on the hero’s head – perhaps because the sculptor, Angelo Zanelli, had portrayed him as a mature man, and maturity often brings both wisdom and a certain reduction of hair.

From our apartment in the Ciudadela building – a light‑blue glass tower dividing the New and Old City – it took less than ten minutes to reach the market. You turned left on Juncal Street, crossed over, passed the iconic Solís Theatre in its neoclassical beige stone, and continued toward the coast. On the way stood a small monument to Second World War aviators which, curiously, depicted a boat. The granite circle around it made a perfect resting place on the return journey with heavy market bags.

As Grandmother Olga and I approached the grey stone, three‑storey market – flanked by palms and other trees – I always anticipated what awaited inside. The aromas reached you before the stairs did: sea salt, fresh fish, butchered meat, sawdust, vinegar, spices. The colours and noises formed their own choreography.

I remember Maria, the Galician fish seller –corpulent, gold‑toothed, large green eyes – wearing dark green rubber boots under her long black skirt. She smiled sweetly at customers while, behind her back, she shook her fist at the helping boy – Juancito –  and occasionally turned to deliver a few sharp remarks. For reasons unknown to me, she considered poor Juancito one of the laziest creatures on earth.

“¡Señora Olga!” the stout, black‑haired butcher in his stained white coat would call. “Come by tomorrow, I’ll have plenty of scraps for your cats.” Everyone knew that Grandmother fed a whole army of stray cats and respected her for it.

“Señor Paulo, muchas gracias, muy amable,” (many thanks, you are very kind) Grandmother replied with her luminous smile, while I tugged at her sleeve to remind her his name was “Pablo”. But Grandmother, who had learned Portuguese in Brazil, refused to adapt to Uruguayan idioms – including names. Surprisingly, this never got her into trouble.

Upstairs were the peaceful bubbles of the charcuterie and colonial shops, with their hanging sausages and bright jars. Zinger’s delicatessen had barrels of salted cucumbers and the faint smell of escabeche. Behind the glass lay pink squares of ham and round cuts of sausage. Madame Zinger – blue‑eyed, soft blond curls, long dark‑red nails – smiled with an angelic look that nevertheless carried a shade of steel. Her husband, in his starched white cap, worked quietly behind the counter. Grandmother joked: “Ah, she knows where she has him!” A joke of one strong businesswoman about another.

I was eager to show my daughter all this. I expected changes – those folks will be gone, the building would be restored and the tall bronze cash registers would be replaced by computers, for example. Those machines were unforgettable: their bottom drawers opened with the noise of a mini‑cannon, scaring you just before you parted with your hard‑earned money. I was prepared for time passing and modernisation.

But I was not prepared for disappearance.

The market was simply gone. In its place stood a huge white stone state building with flags, marked as a bank. And the location felt spatially wrong – as if my feet were taking me left, but reality had shifted to the right.

“Well,” I told my daughter, “it seems the market no longer exists. This happens.” But inside, I was in painful shock.

It took time to recover from this intrusion into both my past and my memory. Surroundings we grow up with – and into which we project so many feelings – do not belong to us. Spaces are disloyal to the memory we have of them, and ungrateful. And yet, when our long‑term spatial memory is violated, it feels like a capital offence on the part of reality. Perhaps because we suddenly grasp that there is less and less of ourselves left in the world.

Luckily, on that trip, many other places remained as they were.

We make paths, we travel roads, yet our footsteps are erased in real time. The citadel of memory deteriorates too; it is not unbreakable. Which is why it becomes imperative to tell the story – to describe the life that was, to pass it on, to keep the circle rolling. Memories live long. Stories told live even longer.