Two days ago, on August 24, 2026, was the final episode of Un Billete a Chattanooga. The engineers of this train, Ana Cirujano and Pablo Moratinos, completed a journey departing from Madrid, bound for Chattanooga, and then returning to Madrid. A journey with 360 stops that lasted around seven years, whose final stretch came to an end with a special selection of guests who had already boarded the train on previous occasions.
For those who are not familiar with it, Un Billete a Chattanooga is a podcast much loved by the Spanish WordPress Community, a space that has welcomed many of the people who are part of the WordPress community, web design, and digital marketing in Spain. In fact, if you think of a well-known name from the Spanish WordPress community, there is a very good chance you can start looking for them among its hundreds of episodes.
Some time ago, I had the opportunity to interview the interviewers themselves, the “Khaleesi of Design” and the “datafreak.” At the time, the podcast was around episode 312, and there were still quite a few stations left before reaching the end of the journey. We talked about their seven-year trajectory, how the show was born, and some of the curiosities of their work as interviewers. On that occasion, they explained the structure of the podcast to me: in episode 180 they had arrived in Chattanooga, from that point onward the return journey began, and episode 360 would mark the final destination. At the time, I was surprised because I thought Un Billete a Chattanooga would exist forever.
The show was born naturally out of phone conversations between Ana and Pablo. They talked about clients, design, SEO, marketing, projects, and all those situations that are part of the everyday work of those of us whose lives revolve around websites. At some point, they decided to do something very simple: hit record and let it flow. And that naturalness eventually became one of the show’s defining characteristics, with a reality podcasting style: without editing that removed every silence and without a rigid script dictating exactly where the conversation was going. But always with respect and with the intention of creating a safe space for whoever sat down in front of them.
Although they researched their guests beforehand, it never felt as though you were listening to a questionnaire. Questions emerged naturally within the conversation, stories led to other stories, and guests could end up talking about something they probably had not even imagined discussing before they started recording.
One of my favorite topics was their reviews of Spanish WordCamps. Ana and Pablo talked about the talks, the organization, and the speakers, but also about the food, the venue, the small details, and everything that ultimately defines the experience of an event. And they did so from a critical and constructive perspective.
Those of us who have organized a WordCamp know the enormous number of decisions and the amount of work involved behind the scenes. Listening to those analyses made it possible to see these projects from another perspective and understand what worked, what could be improved, and how community events were evolving.
Their relationship with WordCamps did not end there either. They were media partners for WordCamp Europe and other international WordCamps, conducting interviews, providing coverage, and helping to promote the events.
And finally, the last day arrived. To say goodbye, they prepared a special episode in which they brought together some of their former interviewees, with the intention of paying tribute to all the people who, together with them, had helped shape each of the episodes. Under the title “Making a Living from WP+AI,” they spoke with ten distinguished Chattanoogers from the WordPress world about how artificial intelligence is transforming their professions. The interviews were organized into five blocks:
Block 1. “The future of building and maintaining WordPress” with Marta Torre (developer), Esther Solá (developer), and José Conti (plugin developer), the person who was interviewed the most times on the podcast.
Block 2. “A web we can trust” with Moncho (WordPress hosting), Néstor Angulo (cybersecurity), and Marina Brocca (legal issues and AI).
Block 3. “Getting someone to find you when they no longer search the way they used to” with Vanesa Gómez (Exprimeviaje.com), Lucía Rico (SEO and GEO), and Santi Alonso (automation specialist).
Block 4. “Why will people continue paying us?” with Sacra Jáimez (SEO), Fernando López (developer, SEO), and Patri Navarro (developer).
Block 5. “And what about WordPress as a community?” with Rocío Valdivia, Juan Hernando (WordPress.org Community Manager), and Fernando Tellado (ayudawp.com).
After almost two hours, Ana and Pablo said goodbye with a certain sense of nostalgia. Professionals, companies, projects, debates, trends, problems, tools, and technologies passed through their episodes. In the future, we will be able to return to those episodes and remember how we worked, what concerned us, what technologies we used, what we talked about at WordCamps, and where we thought WordPress was heading. And, above all, we will be able to remember who was there developing, designing, organizing events, building agencies, creating plugins, working as freelancers, launching projects, or trying to figure out how to do their jobs better.
Un Billete a Chattanooga is not a collection of isolated moments featuring interviews with different people; it is a small archive that leveradge collective knowledge, and documented a period in the WordPress community and web design in Spain.
And yes, we will miss it. We will miss that feeling of entering a conversation that had already started. The stories about clients. The discussions about design and WordPress. The WordCamp reviews. The jokes. The differences of opinion. The unexpected questions. The guests who answer everything except the question they were asked, etc. And that ability to talk for hours while making the listener feel as though they were sitting at the same table.
Thank you very much, Ana and Pablo, for all these hours. Thank you for the interviews, for the conversations, for sharing your work, your doubts, your experiences, and for leaving an important part of the knowledge and the people of this community on record.
This August 24, we archive the last ticket to Chattanooga, punched by the ticket inspector. We reached the final destination, the train stopped, and the engineers stepped off. We are left wishing we could travel a little longer, but very soon we will meet again on another journey, because if there is one thing trains do, it is travel and travel, even when the final destination changes.
So, let’s wait for the next train!
What the full episode here:
