BARCELONA AVALOTS*

PLEASE READ FIRST

Last few years a huge social movement has been developing and growing in Catalonia. By no means Barcelona is anymore a good place to live, quite the opposite; life is beautiful in this amazing city, with such a strong personality of the different neighborhoods that compose it, streets are 100% safe and I have never seen a bad answer or aggression when ideas about ideology are explained with respect and tolerance.

Having said that, let’s have a quick overview of what happened, based on facts, to be aware of the story and better understand the different points of views of a same reality (once again).

What you will find below is a very summarized version of the facts, so please, if you are really interested, dig more into the topic.

AVALOT

Definition

CATALAN NOUN

An impressively large or varied display of something

A violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd

Riot

CATALONIA’S ESTATUT THING

A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY

CATALONIA’S ESTATUT THING

A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY

2006 - Mas and Zapatero agree for a Estatut

It would include the term “nation” but only in the preamble and defined Catalonia as a nation within the articles. It is approved in the congress and referendum.

2010 - Court accepts appeal

14 articles are declared unconstitutional by the Spanish Constitutional Court.

2017 - 1st October referendum

The referendum, banned by the Spanish government is carried out in Catalonia with severe police raids. The question was:

“Do you want Catalonia to be an independent republic?” Yes / No

2019 - The sentence

Spanish Supreme Court accuses for sedition the Catalan political leaders and they are handed 9-13 years prison sentences.

THE TOPIC THAT MATTERS

LET’S TALK ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY

THE TOPIC THAT MATTERS

LET’S TALK ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY

Some wise man said that reality is neutral, nor good, nor bad, and that it’s our perception which makes it one or the other. So let’s analyze the situation from a purely photographical point of view. No doubt the situation on the streets was dangerous and risky, but the opportunities where great. People, fire, lights, movement…

Of course it was night, and the contrasts between the fires and lights where very high, therefore, I was using matrix and center weighted metering modes, to avoid too dark or too bright (and too high ISO) pictures. I was shooting mainly with my Sony 55mm 1.8 as I wanted to avoid the sensation of being too far from the action in the pictures. I had to setup the aperture to pretty much the maximum (F1.8 – F2) to get as much light as I could into the sensor, and this also helped creating out of focus backgrounds highlighting the targets in my photographs.

Blog: Metering modes for street photography

My phtographic strategy was clear: There was the police on one side, the demonstrators on the other and the barricades in the middle. I wanted to be close to the action, but this involved some danger. Luckily I had my bicycle’s helmet which was very good to have it at that point.