Isidro García, originally from Mazarrón (Murcia), arrived in the Trinitat neighborhood in 1955, before it was divided into Nova and Vella. “I started working as a hairdresser’s apprentice, and on Sundays I went out with my camera… one Sunday a family having a snack told me to take a photo of them. They gave me their address and days later I took them home five pesetas worth of photos. And since then, when he didn’t cut his hair, he took photos out there. In the snow of ’62, I took about 3,000! “
Some of those snapshots make up the dozen large collages made with photos from the last 60 years by the artist Joan Tomás that these days are displayed in the streets of the neighborhood in order to enhance the neighborhood memory and the feeling of belonging to this side of Barcelona. This is a municipal initiative framed in the Pla de Barris and articulated through a string of neighborhood associations. They say that few neighborhoods have as many associations per neighbor as Trinitat Vella.
“I took the photo of the street with the poles,” continues García, the 90-year-old photographer, very proud. Before, these stairs were made of wood, surrounded by fig and prickly pear trees, and these floors were barracks… and that street, Turó de la Trinitat street, was the street of the poles, because the electric poles were in the middle of the street, and One day a truck skidded and crashed into one, which stayed there, tilted, and I took a photo of it.”
Then, more or less at the end of the 60s, remembers Amador Expósito, from the Associació per la Recerca i la Divulgació de la Mòria Històrica de Trinitat, the street of the posts was the reference for taxi drivers in Barcelona. “In reality the street of the posts continues to be the street of the posts.” Expósito had to appear in one of the group photos of this open-air exhibition, riding a wooden horse, but as a child he was very afraid of cameras and he cried so much that in the end they took him out of focus. “The axis of this project is the popular festival as a protest tool. Here people had to fight for schools, for the bus and the subway, for the asphalt itself…” “And it is important that the new generations and the nouvinguts know this,” added Olga Montero, from Trinifoc, “so that the feeling of neighborhood is not lost, so that they also know that they are part of something.” “Many things were achieved here, but there are still many more to be achieved. “We are so surrounded by roads that playing football is harmful to the lungs.”
Tomás, the artist in question, has been hanging giant photos of people in the streets, in his streets, for about 20 years. Before the civility ordinance he did it without municipal permits. “People stop, recognize each other… and from there arises the encounter between each other, and around photography a kind of neighborhood agora is formed.”
García, the 90-year-old photographer, points out the Suleiman hair salon. that he is right here. “This was my hair salon… The magic scissors! They even came from Barcelona to get their hair cut. Then, when I stopped working, I sold it to this guy, who named it after him. And so it continues to be a hair salon.”
