Returning to Barcelona for a visit I’m reminded of why I loved to lived there and why also I left the city. It is beautiful, modern, vibrant, yes, but cars choke its corazón, noise deafens you, metro crowds unsettle you, and you flee to any corner where there is even just the muted noise of distant cars let alone pure silence. Continue reading “Photo Essay: Barcelona Streets”
Malaga province’s Caminito del Rey achieved fame and infamy for being one of the most dangerous walking tracks in the world. Closed down for years after two rock-climbers fell to their deaths, the Caminito has now been restored and reopened to public access, allowing visitors to safely stroll through the canyons and valleys through which the track winds. Continue reading “Photo Essay: Man vs Nature on the Caminito del Rey”
Every year in Arcos de la Frontera, a small but spectacular hilltop village in Spain’s south, the local people create what they call Belen Viviente, a living nativity scene or living Bethlehem. Visitors walking through the streets and plazas see bakers, iron-smiths, weavers and farmers working and living as if it were a typically brisk December’s night in Palestine some 2016 years ago. 2016 years on, millions of Marys and Josephs continue seeking room at the inn, still to no avail. Continue reading “Photo Essay: A Living Nativity Scene in Arcos de la Frontera”
The abandoned Palmera Plaza Grand Hotel is emblematic of Jerez de la Frontera’s period of boom and bust in tourism and construction. Having opened its doors as a five-star, luxury hotel in the heart of the city centre, Palmera Plaza now festers in disrepair; attracting vandals, fire-bugs and the curious to explore its apocalyptic interior. Continue reading “Photo Essay: The Ruins of Jerez – Palmera Plaza Grand Hotel”
Jerez’s Santiago Quarter, famed for its gypsy and flamenco culture, came alive today with a procession of an enormous gilded float through the barrio’s streets and laneways. A group of men carried upon their shoulders a figure of a tormented Jesus Christ on the road to Calvary. After hours of slow manoeuvring around the tight corners, the figure was finally delivered to the newly renovated Church of Santiago, where it will rest until next year’s Semana Santa celebrations.
In Jerez de la Frontera several hundred people took to the streets to demand the termination of the secretive TTIP Free Trade Agreement between the EU and the US, a deal which threatens to bolster the legal power of multi-nationals against democratically-accountable states. The act was part of hundreds of similar protests across Europe, with tens of thousands taking place across the continent. Thanks to the anti-TTIP protest movement, the TTIP agreement is now facing further delays, with many observers predicting that the deal will soon be scrapped entirely.
Continue reading “People Before Profit: An Anti-TTIP Rally Photographic Report”
Lives and Times 