To Barcelona, Forever is the sequel to To Barcelona, With Love on the Hallmark Channel, and they’re part of the network’s Passport to Love series. Both films star Ashley Williams and Alison Sweeney as American women finding love in Spain. While the first film focused on Sweeney’s character, Erica, realizing her true love is the man she’s been friends with for years, the second film finds Williams’ character Anna posing as the fiancée of a man she just met to keep his very traditional family happy. The films are two halves of a satisfying and sweet whole, complementing each other perfectly.
Opening Shot: Erica (Alison Sweeney) meanders through her adopted hometown of Barcelona before ending up at the flower shop owned by her best friend Mateo (Javier Santos) where she brings him breakfast.
The Gist: If you need a refresher or didn’t see To Barcelona, With Love, Erica is an American living in Spain and working as a translator. The last thing she translated was a book called Barcelona, Mi Amor, written by an American named Anna Kelly (Ashley Williams), but the Spanish-language translation of the book became a wild success thanks to some of the poetic license Erica took with her writing. (Which is to say, she made the book better… and that made her realize she should be a writer herself.) So now, in the sequel, Erica is working on a novel of her own. Meanwhile, during her time in Spain, Anna discovered her passion for food writing and so for the past five months, she’s been traveling and eating her way through Europe to get her food writing career off the ground.
Erica has been dating Nico (Alejandro Tous), a bookstore owner she was friends with, but only pursued romance with thanks to Anna. When Nico decides to propose to Erica, he invites Anna there to be a part of the celebration. Anna’s been looking for a way to turn her food writing into a real career, and when she’s back in Spain, she meets a man named Javier Estrella (Miguel Brocca) whose family runs a renowned saffron farm. Anna desperately wants to write a story about the Estrellas and their farm but Javier forbids it, his family isn’t in it for the glory, and their methods are a well-kept secret. But he and Anna hit it off, despite the fact that there’s something else (besides his saffron secrets) Javier isn’t telling her.
The two spend one amazing night hanging out and assume they’ll never see each other again, but as fate would have it, Anna’s car breaks down right outside Javier’s village the next day, and he offers her a bed to sleep in until the car can be charged. But Javier is, again, very shifty and secretive, explaining that his family can’t know Anna is there. When they inevitably do find out she slept there, chaos ensues. That’s because Javier’s family is extremely traditional. He explains that the day he met Anna, he was supposed to be meeting with a matchmaker who was going to set him up with a wife because he’s not allowed to inherit his family farm until he’s married. Javier only has until the next harvest to get married, or else he loses his claim to the farm. (There are SO many rules to these historic traditions, it’s hard to keep track.) But Javier never went to the matchmaker after he met Anna, but now that she’s there and his whole family sees her, they assume she’s the bride he was set up with.
Javier’s family, his mother in particular, would be devastated to learn Anna is not Javier’s real fiancée, so they make an agreement; she’ll stay and live there through the harvest pretending to be his fiancée, if he’ll let her write an article about his family farm for her website. It will be just the thing she needs to get a paid job as a food magazine contributor, and the agreement will keep Javier’s family at bay for a while. (Oh, and Erica also arrives to Javier’s village still thinking Anna’s broken-down car needs help, and she’s pulled into the ruse too.)
Anna starts to really enjoy living with Javier’s family though – she has no family of her own back home – and starts to wish it was all real. She knows her happiness has an expiration date and it will all come to an end once the harvest comes and Javier comes clean… unless Javier’s family bucks their traditions and accepts their relationship as is.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? The “faking a relationship and then falling in love for real” trope is positively Shakespearan, hearkening back to Much Ado About Nothing; this version feels more akin to one of the more modern interpretations like Anyone But You.
Our Take: While farces are not usually my favorite genre, this one feels different because even though Anna and Javier are keeping up the ruse that they’re engaged just to keep his family satisfied, the fact is, they’re a believable couple from the jump. Even though their engagement isn’t real, you kind of wish the two would stop lying to themselves about it and just be engaged, because their chemistry is off the charts. It’s especially fun when Erica and Nico both arrive to the village and also have to play into the lie, because they’re roped into it as maid of honor and best man and they make a truly adorable quartet.
Ashley Williams’ acting style usually plays to her sunny disposition, but in this film, she plays Anna with a lot more vulnerability, tempering her typically unflappable personality with wistfulness. You can feel her love for Javier in every frame – it’s not that it’s unrequited love, it’s just that she’s figured out her feelings sooner than he has. The fact that she’s fallen for his family, who are warm and welcoming, something she longs for, adds a layer to the relationship and to the performance.
Parting Shot: Everyone gathers in Javier’s family home to celebrate Erica and Nico’s wedding.
Performance Worth Watching: It’s not fair to call out all four of this film’s stars, but I applaud the casting directors for coming up with a foursome – Sweeney, Williams, Alejandro Tous and Miguel Brocca – that seems like they would all believably be best friends.
Memorable Dialogue: When Anna asks Javier’s father, who speaks very broken English, for the WiFi password, he seems confused. In an attempt to clarify, she explains, “WiFi? It’s, uh, energy? And you use your computer? People fight with each other? Cat videos?”
“I’m just teasing you, of course we have WiFi,” he tells her.
Our Call: STREAM IT! By the time this film ended, I was disappointed to know that this is it for the To Barcelona series because I’ve totally been won over.
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.
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