Spiritual manual of instructions on the emptied Spain

A married couple, hand in hand, seen from the distance of what fits behind the cut-out window of a tractor, a paradigm of the countryside. A hotel establishment, iconic for a generation –that of Saúl Alija-, the rent, the world of throwaway, which is perhaps the most subtle way of trading with nothing, the unstable, what does not last. A profile on a social network on the internet, the sale of the body, of what we are, the materiality that makes us. Alija addresses the experience of running out of solid, firm, durable grips. And the dialogue, the word and the Word, which found us, root us, offer us horizons.

A few years ago I wrote that "the rural world is another way of understanding oneself in the world, of positioning oneself and taking a position before it". (“The other emptied Spain”, EL NORTE DE CASTILLA, April 16, 2019, pg. 28). Of course, those who have lived in the countryside and do not only know it for a weekend getaway or summer vacation, understand that the rural world entails a different way of being a man, of functioning in society (usually tiny) and of relate to the environment. And surely they also perceive that, to a large extent, we have imposed the contemporary urban way of life, so distant, on the rural world, exporting a way of seeing the world that has little to do with their own. Although, in truth, less and less. Perhaps the rural world is willing to return some questions to us today.

Saúl Alija is doubly subversive with this exhibition at the MECYL. He poses, point blank, a question about our way of being a man and a woman, the values ​​that move us, the demands we demand, the aspirations that encourage us. What moves the world, ultimately. Alija offers the viewer a stop and a meal to think and think about ourselves. And he proposes. With a critical sense. He does not stay in the mere effective denunciation. He dialogues in parallel with the urban and rural world. He searches the sources of faith, personal introspection and even Christianity for an attempt at dialogue between the rural world and the contemporary world. Did someone say that ethnography was only a museum object or a mere reason for canned representation at popular festivals? Perhaps she is more alive than ever and speaks to us more clearly than she has ever done up to now -due to the greater distance with us-. "Do not be unworthy of your grandparents," they once told us. Neither are the viewers of this show. That's how we want it.

Rafael Angel Garcia-Lozano
Commissario