In 1975, a photographer set out to document the popular festivals of Spain. The resulting book changed everything.

Thirty-five later, in front of the same photographs, I remember the moment when my parents took me to see an exhibition that changed my life. I will never forget that they ended up buying me the book, which I treasure. And I decided to become a photographer.

‘Hidden Spain’ is the most important book in the history of Spanish photography. He changed so many things that he is considered little less than a living legend. All those involved demonstrated that a book of author photography in our land and succeed. Furthermore, he appeared at a time when there was a commitment to modernity. And presenting a book about old traditions in black and white seemed like editorial suicide.

Since then, the traditional festivals are more alive than ever and photographers do not stop capturing their personal vision of these events.

‘Hidden Spain’ by Cristina García Rodero, the sacred book of photography

In the Spanish transition everyone wanted to see and live the future. He wanted to forget everything that smelled old. Forty years of dictatorship were to blame. But we couldn’t leave behind what we were. The change in economy and the forgetting of the rural world were not reasons to forget our roots, at least in the vision of many creators and artists of the time.

Cristina García Rodero, in 1975 and at just 23 years old, won a scholarship from the Juan March Foundation that allowed her to search for the origins of our history, how we are and why. With the 180,000 pesetas (€1,081.82) of the prize she bought her first camera and set out on the murderous roads, as she calls them, to find, with the help of Julio Caro Baroja, the popular festivals that were lost.

The work continued for fifteen years, stealing time from time. Sleeping where possible, eating when possible, finding in the stations, in the bars full of men of that time and in the confidences of the telephone operators, information impossible to search for by other means.

It all started fifty years ago. And thirty-five years ago it was published in book form. ‘Hidden Spain’, because it shows what was not seen. She received many awards, she herself says that there were occasional trips, but today we have in our hands what is considered the best photography book in Spain.

This year it has been reissued again, with more than 50 new images and about €60. If you want that first edition, you can find it for more than €1000 on some pages, although the realistic thing is to buy it for about €400. But why is it so important?

The history of the book that changed photography in Spain

In Spain there had rarely been an author’s book of such magnitude. They were always editorial commissions to show the beauties of the country or to accompany the texts of novelists, as we can see in that wonderful project that was ‘Word and Image’ by the Lumen publishing house in the 60s-70s.

Publio López Mondéjar, a distinguished historian, put Juan Carlos Luna, general director of the Lunwerg publishing house, and Cristina García Rodero in contact, as if she were a matchmaker. And from those meetings this book that we have in our hands was born. She toured a country that was waking up from the lethargy of the dictatorship, in which everything was changing. And forgetting customs. Nobody wanted to remember the traditions. That is why Cristina García Rodero’s bet was seen as suicide by some, as a flower of a day.

She persevered to carry out a job that lasted fifteen years. Her in black and white, her sneaking into old houses, talking to anyone who could tell her stories about the holidays and traditions that only her grandparents remembered.

He managed to capture a reality that was only written in books hidden in libraries and that was being lost in memories. The locals did not believe it was possible for a woman like her to travel so many kilometers to see her costumes and customs. She suffered machismo, but she fought like no one else. Nobody could stop her.

In the end there were 152 photographs (which we can see now), developed by Juan Manuel Castro Prieto in the chemical laboratory, with many stories inside. With a style that today is rewarded by awards, recognitions and an endless list of photographers who consider ourselves indebted to his work.

What makes a photography book be relevant? Well, the same thing happens with a novel, a movie or a song. May he change the way of writing with the camera, may he influence future photographers and may he be recognized by his contemporaries. Cristina García Rodero is a tireless worker. It is one of the keys to her success. She has nothing to do with the brilliant character in Paolo Sorrentino’s ‘The Great Beauty’, who allows herself to be carried away by laziness.

He sacrificed his life to do what he wanted in the free time that his job at the university left him.

The edition and the message

Once the work is done, it’s time to enter the world of editing. And this is where the photographer is really born. Where Cristina García Rodero appears and she becomes one of the most important figures in Spanish photography. The book, which was printed with a quality never seen before Until then, with real blacks and whites, it has one of the best editions that we can enjoy, allowing us to read a photography book.

People outside this photographic world may think that the images are placed one after another for simple chronological reasons, but this is not the case. Just as we put words together to make sense, following stylistic and grammatical rules, photographs have to do it in their own way.

If you read ‘Hidden Spain’ with the eyes of a photographer, you will realize the story that the author wants to tell us. It has several levels, and when you find them, you understand their value and importance within the history of photography. The title is very descriptive. We see what is hidden, what is about to disappear. The first photograph, where we see that woman screaming with joy, warns us of the parties that we are going to see next.

It is pure life through rituals and celebrations.

From the joy of living, the innocence and fear of childhood to the rites of death, with that final hope that the girl jumping in front of the cemetery door gives us. At the beginning of the article I recalled ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’. There Gabriel García Márquez told us about the magical realism of Macondo with the music of words. Cristina García Rodero teaches us, snatching them from death, as she herself says, the moments of a story.

Girls rise before cemeteries and boys fly in processions, play with crosses. Grandmothers laugh toothlessly and confess things they have not done to priests who do not listen to them. It is another world to which we belong, although we do not know it.

But we find another level of reading in this unique book, something that is rarely seen so clearly and that we only find in gems like ‘The Americans’ by Robert Frank. The relationship between photographs, reading the double pagea, the simple magic of editing.

When you discover it, you can’t help but look at books in a different way. I always use the second and third page as an example to explain it. We see a man dressed in black in front of a white background. In the next one, a man dressed in white in front of a black background. They can’t go any other way. Between the two they add up.

And so on throughout the pages. The dialogue between the photographs in the book is magical, simple and understandable, the ladies who laugh at the erotic insinuation of the man in the image on the left, the children dressed in black next to those dressed in white, the girl in front of the grandmother, the visual break of the solitary images on the right, etc., etc.

The legacy of García Rodero

After the publication and success of this book, there was talk of the new golden age of Spanish photography. New photographers followed in their wake, recovered historical figures that had been forgotten and their contemporaries began to sound. He gave visibility to popular festivals at a time when they were heading towards discredit, when they were thought of as relics of yesterday. We realized that we cannot forget.

It is an example to follow. In the presentation at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, on the 35th anniversary of the reissue of his book, García Rodero remembered women, the precariousness of the photographer’s work and the need to have institutional and private support to tell how is the world. In García Rodero’s view, taking a photograph is not having the best mobile phone or relying on artificial intelligence to shoot. It’s not a pose either.

It is the power of telling stories that will last into the future. It’s being able to see how the spaces and people you look at through the lens grow and change. It’s living to tell about it.

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