ESPE PONS
— Under the Light of the Sea
“Contemporary art becomes necessary for us when we have a tendency to forget.”
Vicenç Altaió
La Xemeneia Gallery
This exhibition, entitled Under the Light of the Sea, is a photographic essay documenting the final period of the life of Tomàs Pons Albesa, the younger brother of the artist’s grandfather, in post-war Barcelona. It is likewise conceived as an homage in memoriam, with the aim of dignifying the life of Tomàs and of every other victim of the repressive dictatorial regime.
Espe Pons (Barcelona, 1973) is a photographer who has had an active professional career. She began to show interest in photography at the age of fourteen, and since then has continued to pursue the capture of images, always demonstrating great passion for her art. Since the 1990s she has regularly exhibited in galleries and at prestigious national and international art fairs, and recently spent a period in Beijing on an artistic residence with Jordi Jové.
Tomàs Pons Albesa, born in Barcelona on 15 April 1910, was the youngest of three siblings. At a young age he committed himself to the Republican cause, and during the Spanish Civil War fought in Madrid and Teruel. During the first years of the dictatorship he was a member of the clandestine PSUC (Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia) and was later General Secretary of Socors Roig (Red Aid) of Catalonia, an organisation which assisted communist prisoners and refugees and their relatives.
In 1940 he was detained along with fifty others and taken to the Superior Police Prefecture of Catalonia (Barcelona) where he was tortured. He was then transferred to the La Model prison in the city, which was the beginning of a painful period of his life that remained largely unknown until Espe Pons decided to research his story in 2018.
At half past three in the early morning of 14 May 1941, Tomàs wrote two letters from cell 447 to say farewell to his family, as he knew he would be executed shortly afterwards. He was thirty-one years old and had been in prison for a year and three months. These emotional letters reveal the character of a man who was affectionate, generous and brave, and who fought to the end for his ideals and for freedom.
Almost eighty years later, Espe Pons began to pay attention to the documentation on Tomàs which had been kept in their home, thus embarking on an intense period of research with the scanty material at hand.
So as to weave together Tomàs’ story, Pons visited and began to photograph various spaces: the National Archive of Catalonia, the archive of the Third Military Tribunal, the Civil Registry, the Contemporary Municipal Archive, La Model prison, Camp de la Bota Park, the Superior Police Prefecture of Catalonia, the Historical Memory Documentary Centre in Salamanca, the College of Medicine of Barcelona and the Fossar de la Pedrera execution site, amongst others.
To gain a deeper appreciation of the ambience of post-war Barcelona, Pons photographed sites that still today have the physical marks of military conflict. Her images arouse a chilling sensation of emptiness, while in an abstract manner also seem to emit frightening sounds. Air Raid Shelter 307, beneath the streets of Barcelona’s Poble-sec neighbourhood, the bullet-marked façade of the Sant Felip Neri church and the trenches still seen in the town of Rodén, in the province of Zaragoza, are just a few examples.
Meanwhile, Espe Pons brings us closer to details of Tomàs’ life. For example, the nocturnal image of a waxing moon seen through tree branches was taken on Rec Comtal Street in Barcelona’s La Ribera neighbourhood, where he lived with his sister Teresa during the final period of his life.
The series then focuses on the final months of Tomàs Pons’ life, centring on two images: one is of the sea?which he loved so deeply?and the other of the sky?a symbol of freedom. Both of these images were taken in the early hours of the morning on the very terrain where Camp de la Bota was once located (near the present-day Parc del Fòrum).
The Camp de la Bota area was the site of numerous executions: from 1932 to 1952 some 1700 political prisoners were killed by firing squad. Nowadays, the wall where the executions took place is at the bottom of the nearby sea, which explains the title of this exhibition, symbolizing the gentle touch of light as it filters down to the immersed penumbra: Under the Light of the Sea.
Various photographs reconstruct the end of Tomàs’ life, while at the same time representing a painful chapter in Spanish historical memory: the half-open doors of the police station where he made his declaration; a notification signed in unknown circumstances; a lugubrious set of stairs going down to a basement, where screams of pain would be heard; the door of his cell and its four, nerve-wracking walls, as well as the long lists of names and surnames of those whose lives were ripped away from them.
The narrative ends with images of the Fossar de la Pedrera, at Montjuïc Cemetery, which was often the destiny of these poor souls after execution. In the present, however, this former quarry has been turned into a landscaped area designed to commemorate Tomàs and other victims like him. His memory now rests in the arms of nature, enveloped by the carefree flight of birds.