SPACE
Space is sort of a social process that has been constructed throughout history. That is why Henri Lefebvere talked about space being produced through the interaction of "representations of space" or "conceived space", "spatial practice" or "perceived space", and "representional" or "lived" space. This means space is not a static, exact concept but can be viewed as representations (like maps, images, descriptions, etc.), practices carried out within and through them (all material, economic, environmental or people flows), or subjective, emotional or symbolic elements that influence how people feel spaces. Neil Smith put it, we can take any scale to define "space", from architectural space to the whole surface of our planet. In our case, we could think of Santa María del Mar as a small-scale space, that in this case is in fact static and has been represented in a wide variety of ways.
PLACE
The geographer John Agnew defined the term "place" as the sum of a location -a pint in space with relation to others-; a locale -the context in which social relations happen there-; and a sense of place -the physical or culural characteristis that a place possesses or the meaning it has for people, which depends on experience and cultural background. Namely, the sum of the conceived space, the perceived space and the lived space. Therefore, a place like Santa María del Mar is more than an objective place, but one with subjective connotations that both its context (the fact that it is a place of religious cult) and the sense of place that each person might feel (because they are believers, appreciate its historical meaning, visit it as tourists or know the place because of the novel by Ildefonso Falcones).
SCALE
The definition of this term has been quite difficult to conclude even for geographers, but ultimately, scales are simply ways of framing reality according to our understanding of the world. Richard Howit classified three aspects of scale: as size, level or relational concept. According to this, scale can be simply a form of measurement in a standarized unit (as in the example of a map), but also in more complex ways that make it harder to do the divisions. The relevance of scale is not the categories that come up with a specific scale, but how these apply to explored phenomena.
LOCAL*
The"local" is the most delimited, reduced category in the scale in which we often divide the world, according to space, social processes, etc. In the binary local-global, the "local" is often interpreted as the "powerless", the part being shaped and changed by the "global", or even the part getting lost by globalization and its consequent homogeneization. Nothing further from truth: first of all, it is the "global" that needs local elements to take form. Secondly, as theorist Bruno Latour argued, the complexity of the world we live in cannot be divided in levels, nor in spaces that clearly distinguish from one another. Santa María del Mar might be a strong element in the local history of Barcelona, but it is understood in a broader historical context of which it forms part.
GLOBAL*
Globalization has been argued as one of the causes of rescaling people's everyday lives. The "global" can be accused of causing homogeneization of cultures, and this is true to an extent. Nevertheless, the "global" is not something artificially fabricated, but a dynamic process in which the local, the regional and the national interact and are expanded in space. As of today, Santa María del Mar and the whole area would be nothing like it is without people from all over walking around, appreciating its religious, historical or artistic meaning, knowing it has been a symbol of the city for centuries or finding it casually in the middle of local bars, souvenir stores, and many other symbols of Barcelona: the local Barcelona and the global Barcelona.
* Both of these definitions are based on how we perceive the situation, presenting both different points of view, but not being independent. In fact, they overlap, since the "local" is ultimately what integrates the "global", and the "local" is where the global effects take place. They are categories of geographical scale, and as such, interpretative frames in which we organize and analyze the world -its space, the processes happening in it and many other elements.
References:
David Harvey. 2006. "Space as a Keyword in Noel Castree and Derek Gregory". London: Blackwell pp.270-293
Susan J. Smith. 2005. Chap 2 and 35. "Introducing Human Geographies". Hodder Arnold pp.18-34
Neil Smith. 2008. "The Production of Space. Uneven Development" Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Nathan F. Sayre. 2016. Chap 7. "A companion to Environmental Geography"London: Blackwell pp.95-108
Andrew Herod. 2009. Chap 12. "Key concepts in Geography" Los Angeles: SAGE pp.217-235
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