With the photograph of Xavier Cervera of the candidates for the presidency of the Generalitat at the mouth of the Besòs, at the meeting place between one of the metropolitan rivers and the Mediterranean, the tradition established by Pedro Madueño, a classic of the day of reflection and on election day, he turns 40 years old. Since that first occasion, in 1984, Madueño has portrayed the strange consensus that, except on rare occasions, has presided over Catalan politics and that makes this ritual a differential fact. Below you can see the album with the iconic covers and scenes of how the portraits were made:
Pedro Madueño remembers how a young photojournalist came up with the idea of ??bringing together the Catalan presidential candidates on the day of reflection. “I had arrived at La Vanguardia in 1983, when I was 23 years old. The following year, Manuel Ibáñez Escofet commissioned me to take photos of posters and the electoral atmosphere to publish on voting day. I suggested the possibility of bringing the candidates together on the day of reflection. It had never been done before, but I was convinced that if Jordi Pujol said yes, everyone else would accept too,” explains the father of a ceremony that, many years later, other media would try to imitate but that has always carried the seal of denomination. of origin of La Vanguardia.
Madueño conveyed his proposal to the president of the Generalitat. He was received in his office where, with the help of a drawing (a simple story board) he explained to the nationalist leader the idea of ??sitting around an ballot box – the original was the one used in the elections of the newspaper’s works council. and which is still preserved today – to the five main candidates of those second elections to the Parliament of Catalonia. Jordi Pujol’s response was immediate, without hesitation: “Let’s do it. This can only be done in Catalonia.”
The president was not wrong at all. Pedro Madueño once tried to reissue the Catalan experience in Madrid, in a general election, but with Felipe González and José María Aznar as the main roosters in the corral, that turned out to be impossible. On the other hand, the protagonists of that first photo from 40 years ago, Raimon Obiols (PSC), Antoni Gutiérrez Díaz, Guti (PSUC), Eduard Bueno (Alianza Popular), Heribert Barrera (ERC) and Jordi Pujol himself (CiU) are contributed to that pilot test which, according to the author, was possible thanks to Pujol’s initial attitude, the prestige and capacity to attract people from La Vanguardia and the relationship of trust that the photojournalist had been building with the Catalan politicians of the time.
Over time, “the portrait of consensus,” a name coined by the current deputy director of La Vanguardia Enric Juliana, became a tradition. Madueño takes out a Trivial Pursuit card from his wallet that he shows proudly and that contains the question “Which photographer is the author of the photo of candidates in the Catalan elections” and the corresponding answer.
The photography of La Vanguardia candidates, from the first occasion, has always been taken during the day of reflection, taking advantage of the fact that the candidates’ agendas were only empty that day (for some time now, with the proliferation of montages inspired by the initiative of this newspaper, the Saturday morning before D-Day has ceased to be freely available to presidential candidates). The first ones were held in the offices of the La Vanguardia editorial office on Pelayo Street until 1995 when it went outside.
That first photograph from 40 years ago was, in addition to the “portrait of consensus,” the “portrait of power,” says Madueño, showing that “serious” scenery of the first meeting. Subsequently, in a second phase there was an evolution of the concept and the author began to portray the protagonists of the elections in an attitude more similar to that of the standing, more everyday citizen. And in the third stage of the photos of La Vanguardia candidates, the current one, the image was associated with current events.
Pedro Madueño explains that at first he was the one who had to call and convince the campaign managers to join the game. “Later they were the ones who called me asking for time and place,” says the photojournalist, who never revealed what the montage would consist of in order to avoid political pressure. “Only the director and deputy directors of La Vanguardia were aware of my intentions,” not even the editors in charge of reporting the making of the photo knew that they were going to be at the scene.
The author of the photos of the Catalan candidates, who has also portrayed the mayors of Barcelona in the same conditions for the municipal elections, admits that on some occasions the production has not been easy at all. For example, in 1995, when the tradition, already established and with a single parenthesis in 1988, was moved for the first time outside the newspaper, specifically to a balcony in La Pedrera, blackened at that time by the pollution that so affects the stone used by Gaudí. A complicated assembly that required a crane to be placed in the middle of Passeig de Gràcia. Or in 2012, when Madueño had the idea of ??taking the candidates for the presidency of the Generalitat to a bridge under construction of the AVE in Baix Llobregat. “We had to move the bridge and paint half of it,” recalls the author of that photograph.
Jordi Pujol was the facilitator of the first photograph in the La Vanguardia editorial office on Pelai Street 40 years ago. “He is the politician with whom I have had the most relationship. It was 23 years! “He was very aware of the importance of image in politics and of photo opportunity.” In this tradition of Catalan politics that is the photo of the candidates for the presidency of the Generalitat, the convergent leader is, along with his successor Artur Mas, who appears the most times, four in total. With two photos each, the socialists Raimon Obiols and Pasqual Maragall, the popular Aleix Vidal-Quadras and the republican Àngel Colom appear.
Each image has its anecdote. In the first, Madueño, who always made it a rule not to think about the electoral photo until a month before the elections, placed the ballot box equidistant from the chairs where the five candidates were going to sit, but the socialist Raimon Obiols was moving his seat towards the center of the stage. That search for political centrality was reflected on the cover of La Vanguardia on April 28, 1984, in which the PSC presidential candidate appears practically side by side with Jordi Pujol.
The first exterior photograph, that of the balcony of La Pedrera, almost could not be taken. He was saved for just five minutes, the time it took between Pedro Madueño’s final shot and the fall of a real deluge on Barcelona.
In 1999, the chosen setting was the Sagrada Família school in Barcelona’s Eixample. In those elections it was necessary to choose the first Catalan president of the 21st century, the one that the new generations that appear in the image would know. To surround the candidates with those future voters, it was necessary to mobilize the entire educational center. The La Vanguardia photo became an extracurricular activity on Saturday morning.
The cover of La Vanguardia on November 16, 2003 also had its difficulties, which transferred the candidates to a billboard, painted in the colors of the senyera, in Gavà. The Popular Party candidate, Josep Piqué, suffered from vertigo and until the last moment it was necessary to maintain a protective scaffolding to avoid problems. Or that of 2012, which required moving a ship anchored in the Royal Nautical Club of Barcelona from the port to a dry dock to symbolize the new direction of Catalan politics. Here you can see the rest of the series:
