A very temporary exhibition, in Room 2 of the Palau Robert, shows how Europe has become a kind of great medieval castle where vassals enjoy certain privileges while the owners take care of safeguarding its borders so that the whole invention is viable. All this through the photographs of photojournalist and independent documentarian Sergi Cámara, who, with undeniable talent for immortalizing the most raw expression of drama, offers a story about nine cardinal points of our internal contradictions: the English Channel, the Alps, Horgos, Ventimiglia, the Central Mediterranean, Lesbos, Kos, Irún, Ceuta and Melilla. An exhibition about our asses, our backstage, the ugly part of our well-being. There has been talk these days about the old relationship of some Catalan bourgeois with slavery, but we, who are not rich, have generalized a well-being that, like all well-beings, has a price. And it is a price that we pay, moreover, without seeing it. This is if we don't go to the exhibition, of course.
The texts on the panels are complemented by more extensive texts by the author himself within QR codes, which show us details of the different routes taken by "migrant people" (immigrants) and their hardships. Statistically, the reality shown in this exhibition is chilling, not so much because of the figures themselves (at least 5,684 deaths on migratory routes to Europe since 2021, at least 2,836 people dead or missing on the central Mediterranean route, 1,532 deaths on the Western Africa-Atlantic route to the Canary Islands...), but because as you observe it you know that these are surely inevitable deaths. Or too complicated to avoid, due to the interests at stake, which are, again, ours. Dwelling on statistics can lead us to an absurdity, indeed, like that death toll on the sea that Ada Colau devised for Barceloneta beach: it is more useful to approach the photograph and the explanatory text, which shout at us that perhaps it is true that there is nothing to do, but also that it cannot be that there is nothing to do.
Interesting discoveries such as that the ski slopes of the Alps, at night, are used by refugees and migrants to enter France unseen. Or that many Afghans or Syrians take the Balkan route to reach Europe, as do many Moroccans or Africans who thus try to avoid the almost certain tomb that crossing the Mediterranean entails. Or what Melilla has to do with human trafficking, and not just with the fences and Marlaska's police, or how Turkey connects with Greek islands like Lesbos or Kos for several people to try to flee the war. Especially interesting is the case of Irún, a clandestine link point between the Iberian Peninsula and France, as if it were a dry port for those (especially from the Canary Islands route) who intend to advance even further north, like those others who cross the English Channel in clandestine boats to reach the United Kingdom. Or the case of children who hide under trucks in the port of Ceuta in case a ship can take them to Algeciras, in the purest style of Stevensonian cabin boys. We are right there.
In the faces we see the full imprint of personal biography, aspirations, dignity, sometimes even a normality in the form of light in the eyes or naive hope. The photographs also show stories of violence, hunger, fear, persecution and hell. Especially noteworthy is the human figure arriving soaked on the coasts of Kos, without a single breath of available strength, in a paradoxical mix between the relief of having arrived and the horror of having had to arrive. Or the reproduction of the tombs "to the unknown immigrant" which, on the gravestones, only contain a "R.I.P. Immigrant No. 1" or "R.I.P. Immigrant No. 2". Again, the sinister statistic.
An exhibition that denounces European cynicism, a union of States that Borrell called a "garden in the middle of the jungle" like someone who parrots the concept of "full democracy" without seeing that, within its territory and at its borders, human rights are being violated. Or seeing it, but comfortably installed in the garden. You will have to forgive me, but right now our priority is Ukraine, sorry for the inconvenience.