Life, told by EL PAÍS photographers

Only a small photo, with the face of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José María de Areilza, broke the dense cover of the first issue of EL PAÍS, on May 4, 1976. Today, the digital version contains, at any time when enter to see it, more than a hundred images of different sizes.

It is a comparison, perhaps somewhat crude, that illustrates the revolution that the press has experienced in the last half century.

In that same trip, the transformations in all orders that Spain and a good part of the world have experienced have been documented by the photographers of this newspaper.

There is no complete way to understand everything that has happened since then without seeing his images, as demonstrated in the exhibition inaugurated this Friday at the Cristina García Rodero Museum, in Puertollano.

There are 180 images of 20 photographers, chosen by themselves, to synthesize 44 years of the daily story of today.

As the former director of EL PAÍS, Soledad Gallego-Díaz, says in the text that presents the exhibition: “They are very different photos, and yet they have something in common: they are incredible, beautiful, sometimes sad or terrible, but all bear impeccable testimony of their time ”.

• PHOTO GALLERY: Images of the exhibition 'Photographers of EL PAÍS'

The exhibition

, which can be visited until January 17, 2021, opens with a self-referential image, that of journalists reading EL PAÍS on the steps of the Madrid hotel Palace on the long night of February 23, 1981, taken by Ricardo Martín.

Great portraits of cultural figures are also exhibited of him: Umberto Eco, Carmen Martín Gaite, Antonio López ... An exhibition account that continues to this day, with life prior to the coronavirus crisis, when you could go to concerts like the de Rosalía, photographed by Samuel Sánchez during his performance in Madrid, in December 2019. Only three months before the image that Sánchez took of a woman crossing a deserted Gran Vía in Madrid, at the beginning of the confinement.

The image that the curators of the exhibition, the photographers Vicente López Tofiño and Julián Rojas, from EL PAÍS, have chosen to announce it is known as the “photo of the little fist”, the one that César Lucas, the newspaper's first head of Photography, took a child on the shoulders of his father in a demonstration of neighborhood associations for the high cost of living in June 1976, in Madrid.

A snapshot he took by placing the camera over his head and symbolizing hope in an uncertain future.

Two other images of him: Adolfo Suárez and Felipe González chatting, in the cafe of the Congress of Deputies, and, smiling and together, two antagonistic characters such as Manuel Fraga and Santiago Carrillo, exemplify a mood for the agreement that today seems chimerical.

Then there are the feelings that Marisa Flórez was able to capture, such as the pain in the burning chapel in the Supreme Court for the labor lawyers murdered on Atocha street in Madrid, the tenderness of Queen Sofía with her dogs in the Zarzuela Palace, or the loneliness of Adolfo Suárez in the blue bench of Congress, an indication of a government in decomposition.

"They are images that the passage of time gives more value," says Flórez on the phone, who considers that EL PAÍS has a style and a way of transmitting the news to the reader, although each photographer has their way of doing it, but "the Editing and teamwork have been very important. ", he adds. From the historic photo he took, in 1977, of Pasionaria and Rafael Alberti descending the stairs of the Congress chamber, until today," photography has changed a lot due to technology, the supports, which mark the way of working; and in the times. ”The exhibition, financed by the Junta de Castilla-La Mancha,“ shows the transition to democracy in our country, from a restrictive past in freedoms to one full of constitutional rights, it is a step full of contrasts ”, points out the Minister of Culture of the Castilian-La Mancha government, Rosa Ana Rodríguez.

But EL PAÍS photographers have also told what was happening in every corner of the world.

The selection of Bernardo Pérez's work is from images that hurt, published in the series

, among which two abandoned children can be seen sleeping in the Chittagong station (Bangladesh);

or little Qussi, 10 years old, who looks at the camera with tears on her cheeks after learning that she had been diagnosed with sleeping sickness, in Kamasso Bolo (Central African Republic).

That "careful and sustained photojournalistic tradition", in the words of the former director, passed from those veterans to the next generation.

Gorka Lejarcegi brings to the exhibition the arrival of new icons today, such as Claudia Schiffer, portrayed as a goddess among photographers;

Pedro Almodóvar and Penélope Cruz in a promotional limousine in Los Angeles, or a smiling Felipe and Letizia, in 2006, when they were princes.

Sport and bulls are a guarantee of spectacularity and emotions.

Like the drama that Ricardo Gutiérrez captured in the burial of the right-handed El Yiyo, in the Almudena cemetery;

an exultant Fernando Alonso celebrates his world title or, further back in time, another milestone, the victory of Fermín Cacho, almost in ecstasy as he crossed the finish line as the 1,500 Olympic champion in Barcelona.

Not only have there been sporting triumphs, Spanish society has also achieved goals, such as the recognition of the rights of homosexuals.

At the Gay Pride celebration in Madrid in 2018, Jaime Villanueva, from the terrace of the City Hall and thanks to the afternoon light, made a rainbow flag shine between the asphalt and the shadows of the people who carried it.

The exhibition, in which the work of Juan Manuel Castro Prieto shines in printing, includes the latest ones who have joined the newspaper's staff of photographers.

From Carlos Rosillo, pictures of tragedies have been chosen, such as that of María José Carrasco, a woman with multiple sclerosis whom her husband, Ángel Hernández, helped to ingest a poison to die.

One of those cases in which a photographer "can spend time on a story," says Rosillo.

“Before there was more paper, more options to 'make potholes', as they say in the slang, but the important thing is to always be available.” Another of his photos, which was the cover of the newspaper, is the view from the sky of a devastating fire in Mati (Greece). “I used a drone that I carry for these cases.” Resources aside, what it has been about, for 44 years, as Gallego-Díaz concludes, is to do “journalism understood as a commitment of truth and sincerity".

The portrait turned into a poster of a martyr

Cristóbal Manuel, editor-in-chief of Photography, explains that a normal day in the newspaper "begins the night before, with the forecast of the news and reports to be covered."

"Before, when there was only paper, they looked for synthesis images, but now with the web the development is longer, and a photo gallery can have up to 30 images."

Regarding the style of EL PAÍS, the commitment to the truth stands out.

“In this profession you can cheat, but we don't look for it.

We make clean images, without wide angles, and oblivious to the fashions and effects that they try to manipulate. "From his photos in the exhibition, he remains with the portrait he made of Omran Shaban, the militiaman who caught Gaddafi, who posed with the guns of the dictator, in Misrata, in 2011. "It was in a hotel room. Later, he died and my image has been used by his poster admirers to represent him as a martyr."