An ongoing study of my homeland

In 2018, after more than twenty years living abroad, I tried to make work in/about Galicia. This is a mostly rural territory located in the north west of Spain -bordering Portugal- with an abrupt geography and coastline, dense forests, cliffs, and rias -generally different from what is commonly understood as Spanish landscape.

Alongside Cataluña and the Basque Country, Galicia is under Spanish law recognized as a historic nationality since 1981 -title given due to a sentiment of independence and political reclamation in a territory historically oppressed with a common language, history and culture.

In Galicia there was no Civil War in 1936, but there was a strategic extermination of the republican population and its local authorities. Under the fascist regime, that lasted from 1939 to 1975 - including my parents' generation- Galician language, traditions and customs were brutally repressed in schools and social life -amongst many other mechanisms to erase any cultural expression- . This has been the cause of shame, rage and trauma, having consequences in relation to the collective sentiment of belonging to the place. It is through the lens of this sentiment that I relate to the world.

The series blends childhood memories with a failed attempt to maintain some kind of distance. I photographed family and friends, but also travelled through the country to local celebrations and liturgies, peregrination and religious sites, seaside ports, military cities or remote hamlets. Yet an ongoing piece, I sense the work as the struggle to capture a particular resistance of ours - one that often is misinterpreted as submission.