'I married my holiday fling - we didn't even speak the same language'
A British holidaymaker and Spanish waiter fell madly in love in Menorca despite hardly being able to say a word to one another.
Tracy Barbero, who hails from Cheshire, was on holiday in the Spanish coastal resort with her sister back in June 2001 with no intention of being swept off her feet.
Tracy suddenly found herself locking eyes with her waiter as he served her a drink, unable to tear her gaze away from him.
"At one point I looked at his bum and his friend saw me do it and told him," Tracy, now 55, told The Mirror. "It was a very immediate connection."
At first the couple could hardly say a word to one another
The couple have been together for more than 20 yearsPerhaps encouraged by her saucy stare, the waiter, called Antonio, approached Tracy.
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"He was serving me a drink. He said to me in very broken English, 'Will you be my love?' I went a bit shy and smiled, and said, 'Okay then'."
What then unfolded was a whirlwind romance between the duo, quickly dashing Tracy's plan to relax by the beach reading her book.
On their first date, Antonio hired a car and took her to a beach loved by the locals.
"We had a wonderful lunch and swam in the sea afterwards, and then he took me home, I got changed and we went out in the evening," Tracy recalled.
"We used a lot of sign language and wrote things down on scraps of paper. I still have the papers actually. It was just a lot of looking at each other.
"I didn't speak English. He didn't speak Spanish. It was the language of love."
When Tracy got back home to the UK she found herself so unable to stop thinking about the restaurant worker that she booked another trip to Menorca.
She continued: "I just had to go and see him. This was September. I turned up where he worked and I sat on the sunbeds.
"He was due to finish at 11.30pm. I thought 'What if he doesn't want me, what if he has somebody else?'
"When he saw me he looked shocked, he had his hand over his mouth. He rushed over. I stood up and he held me for ages.
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Their romance blossomed in beautiful Menorca (Getty Images/iStockphoto)"He said to me a few months later that at that moment he thought I was the one."
Two months later Antonio made his first trip to the UK to see Tracy, with what was meant to be an extended holiday ending with him never going back.
The Spaniard learned English at college so the two lovebirds could speak to each other properly, and then found work first as a waiter and then an HGV driver.
"My mum and dad were very supportive but some friends said, 'You've met a waiter, it's hilarious'. They didn't take it seriously, but we knew what we'd had," Tracy said.
The couple would go on to get married and move in together, and are now celebrating his 50th birthday in Thailand.
When it comes to the chance encounter that would go on to blossom into such an enduring romance, the possibility they might've missed one another is not lost on the couple.
"We talk about it all the time," Tracy said. "If you don't take those chances then who know. We are still madly in love."
Tracy and Antonio's love story has already garnered attention, after they won a competition by holiday firm eShores which was looking to find the best holiday romance story.
The competition came as research from the brand found that over half of Brits have engaged in a steamy holiday romance.
You can find out more at eshores.co.uk.
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