Escoles d'Altres Mons - Kim Manresa

Photography exhibition preview at the Maritime Museum in Drassanes last night. 

Names of contributors you'll likely recognise include Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Julian Barnes along with Michael Crichton, Orhan Pamuk, José Saramago, Wole Soyinka, Juan Goytisolo, V.S. Naipaul, Gabriel García Márquez, and one of my current favourite poets, Joan Margarit.

The exhibition and book, Escoles d'Altres Mons/Escuelas de otros mundos, is a collection of photographs of scenes from schools in 50 countries by photo-journalist Kim Manresa. Each black and white photo is accompanied with a text by a Nobel laureate or other prize-winning literary luminary.

Have to say the preliminaries to the exhibition opening were pretty tedious - with six speakers all wanting their say. There were no seats, so for invitees who had come straight from work, or whom had left work early, to dash across the city during the rush hour and then having to stand for 45 minutes and listen to, mostly, self-serving gush was a bit much. There were no refreshments, and what irked most was that the museum's café-bar closed at 8pm.

Still, we made a night of it and repaired to the nearby Bar Pastis to meet up with a friend for a good old chinwag about football, poetry, Guardiola, Cantona, Ken Loach, Maragall and books - great fun.

CENSORSHIP? or cock-up? Repression & Resistance on the streets of Barcelona

Have been active on the Trip Advisor Barcelona travel forum over the past month or so - perhaps a more socially useful form of procrastination than merely surfing.

Anyway, on June 10th El Memorial Democràtic launched a street documentary photography project: Repression & Resistance. It's a fascinating and worthwhile project.

At 12 sites across the city centre there are near life-size photographs mounted on substantial plinths. Each plinth shows a real-life scene from the dark days of Francoist inspired repression

The plinths are erected on exactly the spot where the depicted event took place. So, for example, in the middle of our paseo we now have a stark black and white photo of half a dozen riot police whacking hell out of a petrified group of locals, including an old man and a young woman, cowering in a huddle on the floor. At the junction of Gran de Gràcia, Diagonal and the top of Passeig de Gràcia there is a photo of riot police armed with tear-gas firing rifles.

When out and about with a group of visiting American friends we unexpectedly happened upon one of the photo-plinths. It really brought home to them the terror faced by ordinary folk during the popular struggle for democracy and recognition for Catalunya. And, it reminded them how young a democracy Spain is.

I posted a version of the above text on the Trip Advisor forum, advising visitors to keep their eyes open for the exhibit during their stay. Prompted a fair few responses.

So, inspired by this project I spent a Saturday afternoon wandering from site to site taking photos of the photos. I then wasted a few hours uploading the photos to Trip Advisor. (I think they're there somewhere - lost amid the morass of 24,000 photos of Barcelona). So, then I thought to post a review to Trip Advisor - the review would be searchable, and, if people were so inclined they could view the photos.

Here is the text of the 'review':

Repression and Resistance - a documentary photography project installed on the streets of Barcelona June 10th - September 18th 2010.

A series of 12 near life-size photographs mounted on substantial plinths. Each plinth shows a real-life scene from the dark days of post-Civil War repression. The plinths are erected on exactly the spot where the depicted event took place. So, for example, in the middle of our paseo we now have a stark black and white photo of half a dozen riot police whacking hell out of a petrified group of locals, including an old man and a young woman, cowering in a huddle on the floor. At the junction of Gran de Gràcia, Diagonal and the top of Passeig de Gràcia there is a photo of riot police armed with tear-gas firing rifles.

For more information, including free guided tours, go to:

…gencat.cat/portal/site/memorialdemocratic/.

After uploading 20 photos attached to the reviews (had to split it into two parts) the review was marked as 'pending' (i.e. pending moderation). Six days later I received an e-mail from Trip Advisor telling me that they had decided to not publish the reviews as it was deemed it had infringed their guidelines. No details of the supposed offence were given.

Censorship? Or, ineptitude? I suspect a cock-up by not very well-informed moderators.

But, how to know for certain?

Well, got me fired up, and I'm now on the case ...