Faithful Friends, Passeig de Lluis Companys, Barcelona

Friendship, love, hate, happiness or sadness are a universal asset, inherent to the human race. Friendship knows no creed. Anyone that is able to love, to be kind, to do good, to cultivate friendship is a person and not "the source of all evil". We tend to stigmatize religion, we foolishly fear the unknown, people that look different. These two muslim women covered with what we would refer to as a beautiful peace of cloth, witness to their faith, are looked over the shoulder by many and are generally misjudged by the western world. If I look underneath I just see two wonderful friends, maybe more valuable as persons than many ignorant racists in the first world. This is a delicate issue and maybe the mere fact of musing on it sounds silly or irreverent. Sorry about that. By the way, let's not forget that other well known good citizens of this planet wear or have worn a veil and nobody ever cared. Yet another example of how absurd this debate can get to be. The picture was taken at Passeig de Lluis Companys, Barcelona

Portraying Beggars in Photography

Portraying beggars in our images, shooting at them pointblank, is tough. One should always be aware that our mission is to denounce and not to profit on people's misfortune. No matter how good your intentions are, it will always be hard and there will be a thin line between photo journalism and privacy invasion, between social report and unnecessary overexposure of the weak. Who are we to judge? No one.Will it help grow awareness? Certainly, yes. The camera is just a silent witness, a mere reflection of an instant in our collective reality as captured by one individual. There are so many moments out there that need to be recorded for our collective mind to be more self conscious!

Romanians in Barcelona: Finding People Behind Stereotypes

Behind every immigrant there is a story and not precisely that of a successful individual that found a good job, started a family and managed to be a respected citizen with access to all civil rights. There are immigrants that 'integrate' themselves (awful term to refer to 'you should not bite the hand that feeds you' or 'when in Rome do as the Romans do') and there are others who 'choose' not to do so (or better said, they will never be accepted by 'respectful' citizens, either local or ex-immigrant). Of course, this a delicate topic and there is gray in between black and white. Standing on the 'wrong' sidewalk, whether it was your choice (hard to believe), because you lost the last train, entered a bad streak of luck or simply were born on the other side, will entitle you to receive great doses of rejection and a journey to limbo, the realm of absolute oblivion. And being on the dark side means you will stop believing in man's justice, in fairness, in humanity, in the love of others, in rules not because you chose to but because they sent you there. And why do I say all this, well because there are stereotypes in our society for all that looks different and does not 'integrate' and no country is safe except the 'pure respectful citizens' (not quite clear who belongs and who doesn't yet). There are Latin, Black, Chinese, Moorish, Pakistani, Eastern Europe people and they are all very well classified in our rotten minds in a scale of preference. Nobody talks about the person behind the stereotype, they are rarely given the opportunity to 'adapt themselves' and are treated differently, with a biased criteria. The moment we stop categorizing individuals we will be much better people, or should I say, persons. The image today, a Romanian woman and her child. And this is a link to other Romanians living in Barcelona. What are you going to do, misjudge them or try to find people behind the sterotype?

Catalonian Parliamentary Elections 2010 in Times of Crisis

November 28th, 2010, Sunday morning, Catalans wake up amidst the fanfare of parliamentary elections time. Global crisis effects and the polemic ridden mandate of the Tripartit a triumvirate of left parties composed by Partit Socialista de Catalunya (Socialist Catalan Party), Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Republican Left of Catalonia) and Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds (Initiative for Catalonia Greens), clearly create a general apathy atmosphere among voters although many are conscious that polls favor perhaps conservative and centrist nationalist party Convergència i Unió (Convergence and Union) according to some sources, something that obviously content their electorate but not opponents who fear abstention will incline the balance even further. One thing is certain, as usual, Partido Popular (the right), may be punished yet another year because of their lack of vision and understanding of the Catalan reality. Today, 135 seats will be disputed amongst 39 candidatures in Catalonia, but only a few (about 8) have real possibilities to get seats. Once the Parliament is created, the new President of the Catalan Government will be elected. This Sunday morning we will certainly say goodbye to the left coalition as even in case of victory, its members are reluctant to unite again, and perhaps we will have to say farewell to PSC and President Montilla (the face on the back of the tourist bus in the image above), the scapegoat in these turbulent times of crisis. From my personal point of view, non of the opponents can offer a credible program and I do not think they will or are able to approve laws that get us out of this mess. Some of them give me the creeps like CIU and some others give me the creeps and make me wanna puke like PP, with due respect to their voters who obviously are free to choose. Being myself on the left side of this equation I sincerely have no idea what to vote but I shall vote anyway for fear of what my abstention would bring. Everybody please vote! By the way, famous soccer match FC Barcelona - Real Madrid that was supposed to be played this Sunday is to take place now on Monday due to the elections and at least a majority of us will agree in one thing, supporting Barça!

Drilling La Pedrera: Risking Art Treasures in the Name of Technology

If you want to visit Barcelona this month of November and you expected to take wonderful pictures of La Pedrera or Casa Mila standing across the street you will be quite disappointed. As you probably know Barcelona will be connected to France by AVE trains (AVE stands for Alta Velocidad which means High Speed and at the same time ave means bird). The line between Madrid and Barcelona is already operational while the works from the Catalan city on to the French border are underway after years of delay (expected to connect with the European high speed network in 2012). You probably know as well that recently they were very near Sagrada Familia with the tunneling machine and there was a debate on whether this would affect the Cathedral foundations or not. The fact is that the choice was finally made and Adif the company in charge had to built a protective wall to strengthen the area. The same protection was recommended by a group of experts to be implemented right next to La Pedrera. As you can see in the image they are already drilling to make the 32 pillars which will create a smaller protective wall and it is expected that Barcino, the tunneling machine, arrives here in coming months. After watching the drill approach so ominously over the famous façade I can't help thinking somebody somewhere in some dark ministry office must have screwed it up badly when they let the speed train go along Mallorca and Provença streets (UNESCO gave the international approval) risking our cultural patrimony in the name of development and technology.