It is an incomprehensible situation, due to the excessive dilation in time. The photographer Josep Maria Roset (Rubí, 1932-2020), Creu de Sant Jordi, gave most of his archive to Rubí City Council in 1997; a legacy with around 380,000 negatives and around 150,000 photographic objects of great historical value, images that Roset obtained from professionals and individuals. In exchange, he asked for an image center to be created in his city where one of the most vast and interesting graphic archives of Catalan and national photography would be preserved and exhibited. It was never built. More than 25 years later, after a transfer agreement in 2003 with the Council and an extension of the same agreement in 2011, the archive, gigantic in quality and material, continues to occupy the entire ground floor of the family house. And it is deteriorating at full speed, especially the color.
His daughter, professor Gemma Roset – who helped him for years to classify all the material – is desperate because of the municipal paralysis. “In addition to being frustrating and painful, it is incomprehensible that we have been waiting for so many years. It is an abuse on the part of the City Council”, he says. “If the Consistory cannot take it on, let it be transferred to the National Archives of Catalonia, as we have proposed since 2014″. In fact, the images “should be at a certain temperature, without dust, conditions that are currently impossible. We are out of space, paying for a car park outside the house and everything is at a standstill”, complains the family.
But who was Roset? In 1959 he went to Madrid to work for Europa Press. He was the only Spanish photojournalist who covered the wedding of the Shah of Persia in Tehran. He got to publish in Life magazine the photographs of the death of Dr. Gregorio Marañón. Those prolific years were cut short because he was persecuted by the Franco regime, a circumstance that forced him into exile in France. But in the sixties he returned to Catalonia and portrayed Carmen Amaya, the Cordovès, Tàpies… His objective, that of the camera and the staff, focused on photographing and documenting, with an almost notarial devotion, the democratic transition. He was a theater portraitist for El Globus, CATEX and Center Dramátic del Vallès.
His archive also contains historical photos of local colleagues, such as those of Santiago Grau Carol. “There is an exceptional image of the church bells thrown to the ground, the day the Civil War began. They are very shocking”, recalls the former Minister of Culture of the Generalitat, Joan Manel Tresserras. A good friend of Roset, he has been claiming him for his professionalism for years. “From Culture we gave a grant to the City Council to create the photography center and it was never done. It has not had a strategic and cultural vision. And look at the quality material!” exclaims Tresserras. Several personalities from Rubí and the world of culture have mobilized over the years to resolve the case.
Between 2012 and 2014 Roset took inventory of his archive and worked on his retrospective exhibition. A book was published about his work and the exhibition was held. Right then he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. In 2018 he received the Cross of Sant Jordi. In 2020, affected by the disease, he died. A few months before, the City Council contacted the family to find a solution. “Six months later we reached an agreement to fulfill it in two stages: the second for new donations. But unfortunately it didn’t end up being signed”, explains the daughter. After his death she and the municipal technicians identified the donated materials and sealed those that have to go out. In June of last year, a final agreement was drafted that only needs to be signed. But the Consistory argues that it has no lawyers and everything is blocked again”, laments the family, pained and exhausted.
The historian of photography and curator of his exhibition, Laura Terré, explains that Roset “had a very personal look of his own”. In his archive “is the best photojournalism of the sixties, the introspective portrait of the characters of culture, of the theater, at the height of the best portraits of the first Schommer… Also the grace of the social satire of Maspons or Colita. And the audacity, the denunciation and the insolence against the system. We need to rescue him and take care of him already!”, concludes the expert.
After two months of insistence by this newspaper, inquiring about how the material will be managed, City Council sources responded in July. “We wanted Roset’s extensive work to be of a public nature because we understand that it is our city’s heritage and from the beginning we have worked in this way to preserve local heritage”. For this reason, they elaborate, “we are betting on an agreement between the heirs of Roset, the National Archives of Catalonia (ANC) and the City Council. We consider that it would be the ideal solution for conservation, dissemination and study and to guarantee its unity”. The sources assure that “we have always wanted to go hand in hand with the ANC so that it guarantees the conservation of its dependencies. We have requested their intermediation and we are waiting for a response”.
From the National Archives they are in the case of the quality of the fund, “but the initial agreement prevents the exit of the material from the municipality. From the first moment we are open to collaboration and dialogue, waiting for the resolution between the parties involved”. They point out that in 2023 the Consistory “sent a letter to the ANC requesting mediation, but legally we cannot act because we are not an affected party. Once the parties have reached an agreement, the Archive will be open to collaborating to improve the conservation, description and dissemination of the photographic background”. Gemma Roset suggests: “It’s a fish that bites its tail. If the City Council has to resolve it, who defends the heritage in the face of this abandonment? He must not want the archive, if he treats it so badly”, he concludes.