Wednesday, October 09, 2024

Freelance photographer in Madrid

 For the last few years I've been working on a photographic project about my hometown, Madrid. A mix of documentary, editorial and street photography, caught on the run. This is an ongoing project but I will soon create a new gallery in my website.

 

 

Do not hesitate to get in touch through my website if you ever need a freelance photographer in Madrid.

Friday, September 27, 2019

Prueba de producto: álbum de fotos de Saal Digital


Recientemente hice una prueba de los álbumes de fotos de Saal Digital. El trato con Saal era que, a cambio de un descuento (40 Euros) en el precio final del producto, publicaría un comentario sobre lo que pensaba del resultado final. El descuento no está en modo alguno ligado a que mi crítica sea positiva o negativa, así que esta evaluación es totalmente imparcial. Ya adelanto que estoy muy satisfecho con el libro.




Decidí probar Saal porque la empresa que utilizo normalmente para preparar maquetas (Blurb) no tiene un formato de libro que sea casi exactamente el ratio 2 x 3 de una foto "normal". En esta ocasion quería realizar un libro en el que las fotos aparezcan sin ningun tipo de margen, pero sin tener que cortarlas. Saal me permite hacer esto con su tamaño 28 x 19 cm.

Tengo que decir que aparte del tema del formato estoy muy satisfecho con el resultado que consigo con Blurb cuando utilizo las opciones de mayor calidad (aunque hay que pagarlas), así que no estaba convencido de que Saal pudiera igualarlo.

Aquí van algunas de mis conclusiones:

Programa de Saal: para diseñar el libro se puede utilizar el programa propio de Saal. Basta con bajárselo en el ordenador. Su uso me pareció sencillo y facil de apender en cuanto se practica un poco. Permite ajustar las fotos y el texto de manera totalmente manual, que es como me gusta hacerlo a mí, aunque también se pueden utilizar automatismos y plantillas que yo no usé.

Pedido y entrega: con el mismo programa de Saal se hace el pedido y el pago, una vez terminado el álbum. De nuevo, ninguna complicación. El envío fue muy rápido, solo unos días, aunque no utilicé la opción de correo urgente. Su servicio de atención al cliente también es muy eficaz, resolviendo dudas por correo electrónico con bastante rapidez.

Calidad del producto: muy satisfecho con la calidad de la impresión, el color, el papel y el acabado del libro. Utilicé la impresión digital mate y me gusta mucho el resultado. Muy mate, en papel bastante grueso de gran calidad. Buena reproducción del color. El diseño 100% plano es excelente. En mi caso utilizo a menudo dos imagenes, una en cada hoja, que trabajan juntas como un díptico. El diseño plano y la ausencia de márgenes permite verlas realmente como si fueran solo una imagen. Muy satisfecho también con la portada, sólida y bien acabada, en la que utilicé una de mis fotos.

En conclusión, he quedado muy satisfecho y gratamente sorprendido con Saal. El producto final, una maqueta de libro en mi caso, es impecable y puedo enseñarlo a profesionales del sector con total confianza. No es barato, pero la calidad es muy buena. Volveré a utilizarlo.






Thursday, November 15, 2018

Splendor in the Grass: Rugby in New Zealand

(This article was first published, in Spanish, in the magazine H. Photos and text copyright Nacho Hernandez. All rights reserved)



Traveling across New Zealand, the first thing that calls my attention is that the whole country looks like an impeccable lawn. An immense, perfectly mowed rugby field. I wonder if the country already looked like this when the rugby pioneers brought the sport. It would not have been difficult to find places to play and practice.


© Nacho Hernandez


Rugby was invented in England in 1823 when, according to legend, William Webb Ellis, a student at Rugby school, grabbed the ball during a game of football and started running with it in his hands. The sport was introduced in New Zealand forty seven years later, when Charles Monro, a student from New Zealand at Christ’s College in Finchley, organized the first game in Nelson in 1870.


New Zealand as a country has sometimes been described as an experiment to transplant an idyllic British society in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean. At least with regard to rugby the success was complete, for the sport in New Zealand developed strong roots, started to grow fast and soon took a life of its own. Although invented in England, rugby fits New Zealand like a glove. Without knowing the sport’s origins, one would think that it evolved organically from local traditions and games until it  became what it is today. The population mix in New Zealand also seems designed to create powerful rugby teams. The first New Zealanders who played the sport not only had inherited the love and penchant for sports from England, but they were also a very tough and rugged people. Settlers and farmers used to hardship. The sport suited them. The Maori were also perfect for rugby. Tough, fit, warring people who saw the sport as a battle (which, in reality, it is). Finally, an influx of people from Polynesia added playfulness, speed and a bit of freewheeling anarchy to the game. All these traits are still very present in New Zealand rugby, at all age groups and levels. Combine them in the right doses and the result can be explosive.


Trying to find out more about the pioneers of rugby in New Zealand I head to Palmerston North. This city was put on the map when Monty Python's John Cleese declared that "if you wish to kill yourself but lack the courage to, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick". The city responded by naming a local dump "Mount Cleese", but that is another story and only proves that Kiwis have also kept the motherland’s sense of humour. I went to Palmerston North because it hosts the Rugby Museum of New Zealand. I thought that I might be able to get a nice shot related to early rugby in the country. In particular, I was hoping to find some memorabilia from Charles Monro, the father of New Zealand rugby. When I arrived at the small, old museum, a very nice gentleman, probably in his eighties, welcomed me. I was the only visitor so we chatted about rugby for a while, which in New Zealand is the norm and always a pleasure. When I explained that I was a photographer shooting a story about rugby he was very sorry to inform me that they were moving to a better, more modern building and that all their best memorabilia had already been put in boxes (the rugby museum has since opened at their new location). I was starting to feel like John Cleese. I mentioned how much I had wanted to take photos of some of Charles Monro's items, which would have worked nicely for my story. At that point, a woman rushed out of the back office. “Hola, ¿cómo estás?” she said. Argentina was playing in Palmerston North during the first phase of the World Cup, so she had been brushing the little Spanish she knew. “If you are interested in the history of rugby in New Zealand”, she said with a smile, “you will want to know who this gentleman's grandfather was”. There was my Monro “item”. I had been talking to him for the last 20 minutes. His own grandson.



© Nacho Hernandez

These casual encounters happened to me often while travelling in New Zealand. Being such a small country, it is not rare to bump into people who are part of the sport’s history. Only a few days after I arrived in Auckland I called a local rugby club, Ponsonby, to ask if I could go take some photos. This is one of New Zealand’s most famous rugby clubs. Besides being one of the most successful, it was instrumental in the integration of players from Polynesia into New Zealand rugby and society. Its President, a Bryan Williams, picked up the phone and told me to go visit them any time I wanted. Later I realized this was the Bryan Williams: a rugby legend who played with the All Blacks in the seventies. He is the perfect example of many things good in New Zealand rugby: commitment, fidelity to a club, giving back and, overall, extreme love and respect for the sport.


Bryan “BeeGee” Williams started to play rugby as a kid at Mount Albert Grammar School in Auckland and played club rugby for Ponsonby, where his brothers and father had played before him. He played 113 matches with the All Blacks and at the time held the record as top scorer in the history of the team. His highest point as an All Black was the 1970 tour of a racist South Africa where he, of Samoan descent, scored 14 tries in 13 matches. Like a modern Jesse Owens in Berlin, Williams became the sensation of the tour while ridiculing the apartheid system that until then had forbidden people of his ethnic background to play in that country. Today, completing a full circle, the sixty year old Bryan Williams is President of Ponsonby, he teaches rugby to the kids at Mount Albert Grammar School, and has recently been appointed President of the New Zealand Rugby Union. He has two sons who play for Manu Samoa, the Samoan national rugby team which he successfully coached in the 90s.


When I asked him about his best memory as an All Black, he said it was the very first time he put on the All Black shirt, the day he fulfilled the dream of every kid in New Zealand. At that point he could finally say, “I’ve made it”. I asked him if he thought that becoming an All Black is the biggest possible honour in New Zealand. His answer, without hesitation: Yes. Most men in the country would probably agree with him. Everyone who has ever played for the All Blacks carries his identification number for life, and after. Since 1903 only 1,109 numbers have been given. One of the most select clubs in the world.


* * *

Lineage is very important in New Zealand rugby, something it has probably absorbed, like many other things, from the Maori culture. Even today, Maori tribes can trace back their ancestry to the first waka or canoes that around 1250 carried the Polynesian navigators who became the first inhabitants of Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud. The Maori explain the importance of genealogy or whakapapa using the ubiquitous fern, which in its silver variety is also the symbol of the All Blacks. “As one fern frond dies, one is born to take its place”. In New Zealand rugby, family dynasties of players are frequent even at the highest level. Remembering and honoring those who were there before is part of its culture.


I am travelling to Rotorua, in the Bay of Plenty. A city you smell before you see it. Rotorua is famous for its natural sulphur sources (hence the smell), geysers, hot mud pools and spas, but it also has a strong rugby tradition. I visit Waikite rugby, Rotorua’s oldest team, where members of the Ngati Whakaue tribe have played for decades. At their training grounds, in one of the poorer areas of the city, I watch the youngest players practice under a glorious sunset. Five or six year old kids training with the same intensity and fire in their eyes I had seen at a practice of the uber-professional Blues at Eden Park. The following Saturday I go watch a game of the older kids. Taiwere is twelve years old and the fourth generation of a family playing for Waikite. His uncles, both grandfathers and great-grandfather played before him for the team. When he jumps to the rugby field he is carrying the weight of tradition on his small shoulders.




© Nacho Hernandez

Rotorua is also home to one of New Zealand’s most laureated school teams, Rotorua Boys High School. I go see one of their practices. The intensity of the training sessions that these kids undergo is impressive. The team’s second coach, James Porter, discretely points out one of his players. Only fifteen and already playing with the school’s first team. He is already in the radar of the All Blacks scouts and a probable All Black one day, James says proudly. A stellar performance during a game two days later tells me he is probably right. This is another of the keys to success of New Zealand rugby. The All Blacks are only the tip of the iceberg. Below them there is a very well organized pyramidal structure with a huge base of kids who start training and playing rugby at around the time they learn how to walk. From there, the best continue improving and going up the ladder, until the very best crop reaches the top.



© Nacho Hernandez

In training, as in many other things, rugby has changed since the old days, and particularly since it went professional in 1995. The legend that puts one of New Zealand’s greatests, Colin “Pinetree” Meads, going up and down a hill in his farm with one startled sheep under each arm as part of his training might well be just that, a legend, but the truth is that in the old days Kiwis were tough mostly because of their lifestyle. Some members of the old school make a distinction between farm-strong and gym-strong and question if the new generations, while perfect athletes with gym-sculpted bodies, are at par with the old ones when it comes to roughness, resilience, endurance and sacrifice. A journalist once asked Sir Colin Meads what he thought of the habit of modern-day rugby players of drinking water and isotonic drinks from bibs anytime there is a small interruption in the game. He quipped that, in his time, you were lucky if you got half an orange during the break. And you had to fight real hard with your teammates to get it.


In Ruatoria, a small town in the East Coast, I watch a friendly match between rugby veterans. The Southern Spikers is a team of farmers from the Southern Island, led by former All Black John “Jock” Ross. The hosts are the East Coast Legends, a team made mostly of Maori players. The fact that it has been raining without pause for two days and the field is a pool of mud does not prevent both teams from playing with great strength and verve, even though most of the players are already in their fifties and sixties. The reflexes, the physical form or the hair may not be there anymore, but the drive and the fire in the belly certainly are. The game ends with both teams embracing under the rain, rubbing noses in pure Maori style. The merriment will continue for hours at the social club and, later, at the Maori temple where they will all sleep together. A cook with a Spanish family name, descendant of a sailor that jumped off a whaling ship when it was near the coast and ended up marrying a Maori princess and founding a Maori dynasty, will prepare the feast. But that is another story.



© Nacho Hernandez

One of the identity symbols of New Zealand rugby is the Haka, a traditional Maori dance. It has been performed by the All Blacks since the first international games, but in the past it was a half-hearted affair, more cute than threatening. A Maori player from Rotorua, Wayne “Buck” Shelford, is credited with having transformed the All Blacks’ Haka in the late eighties, when he became captain of the team. Nothing explains Shelford’s character better than the episode that secured him a place in the pantheon of All Black gods. The year is 1986 and he is playing his second test with the All Black shirt. The rival is a bellicose France wanting revenge from a recent defeat. During a “ruck”, a messy phase of the game which in those days was more violent and less controlled than today, a French boot rips Shelford’s scrotum, leaving a testicle hanging loose. The agony from his groin probably masked the pain from having lost four teeth in the same action. Not wanting to abandon his team during what would go down in history as “the battle of Nantes”, Shelford nonchalantly asks the doctor to stitch his private parts so that he can jump back into the field. The doctor obliges and Shelford continues to play until a new blow in the head makes him leave the match for good. To this day he has lost all memory of what happened in that game (and he doesn’t want to remember it anyway).


Shelford was not one for theatrics or gimmicks, so  when he became captain of the All Blacks he decided that, if they were going to do the Haka, they should do it right. Maori elders were consulted, and the Haka was studied and practiced like one more play from the playbook that had to be memorized and mastered. It began to be delivered true to its origins and, more importantly, it was heartfelt. Suddenly, the All Blacks were doing a war dance before every game. A bonding exercise and a challenge to other teams that gives the All Blacks an edge before games have even started.


The Haka is done country-wide, even by teams with small Maori presence. Colleges in particular love it and perform it often before their important games. I am in New Plymouth, in the Taranaki region, with perfectly-shaped volcano Mount Taranaki presiding over the whole region. New Plymouth Boys High School (NPBHS) is playing at home the maximum-rivalry match against Francis Douglas Memorial College (FDMC), also from New Plymouth. Students from both schools, in their uniforms out of a Harry Potter movie, fill the terraces of the Gully ground, one of the most beautiful rugby fields in New Zealand, carved by hand from the earth by workers, students in detention and the own school’s rugby teams during the depression years. One of New Zealand’s rugby temples.


All the seniors from NPBHS form two lines, creating a passageway to welcome their team. They are all barefoot. The moment we hear the cleats of the boots resounding in the distance, filtering through the trees and giant ferns that surround the pitch, the students start doing a Haka which goes on until the team has passed through. Both teams are now in the center of the field and the match is about to start. Suddenly, the crowd goes totally silent and all we can hear is the shouting of the captain. The team follows. The shouting, hissing, sticking of the tongue or eye bugging continues for a couple of minutes, the whole team moving as one person. These kids under eighteen are really feeling it. This is not a game. The match begins with a tension in the air I had not seen in any other sport, ever, but after a few minutes it increases one notch. To celebrate their first points the whole school, watching the match from the terraces in one side of the field, starts doing an impressive Haka at the unison. Hundreds of students shouting their lungs out. Soon enough, the FDMC crowd across the field is doing its own. At this point the hairs in my nape are standing on end and I have almost forgotten to keep taking photos.



© Nacho Hernandez

I am finishing my New Zealand trip in the East Cape. The eastern-most area of a country very much to the East. Near where the new days are born. This rugged area around the East Cape is one of the least touristy of New Zealand. It is predominantly Maori and one of the regions in the country where they have kept more control over their land and lives.


After driving across cliffs and by beautiful beaches, I reach Tokomaru Bay, population 447. A sleepy village by a gorgeous bay, always smelling of sea surf, burning wood and weed. So peaceful I decide to stay for a week.


By the second day people greet me on the street and I have become a regular at the rugby team’s social club. The town has one pub, but the rugby veterans prefer to come here and every evening I am waiting outside in the cold with some of them. The moment the doors open at 5 PM they rush to their designated spots in the bar. Without muttering a word or asking what they want, the barman starts to fill their personalized jars with their beer of choice. They must have been getting the same for years or decades. I can’t follow their pace and have to work hard to finish the jars they keep sending my way. Very soon the conversation is flowing as freely as the beer.


I am talking with Eddie, a member of the Ngati Porou tribe like most people in Toko. A proud Maori and a former rugby player like everyone in the club. Two tours of duty in Vietnam with the ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps). When I ask him if he saw a lot of action at the war he stares into the distance and nods. A tough guy. We are talking about the Invincibles, the All Black team that in 1924-25 toured the UK, Ireland, France and Canada, playing 32 games and winning every single one of them. Every pub, fish and chips parlor, rugby club or shop in the East Coast has a sepia photo of that team, which has reached mythical status in New Zealand. Among its players, there is one the Maori are particularly proud of. George Nepia was born in 1905 in Hawkes Bay, not far from Tokomaru Bay, and kept his roots in the East Coast region. He was only nineteen years old when he joined the All Blacks team that would become the Invincibles, he played every single game in that tour and was key in keeping its immaculate record. Many consider him the best in his position, fullback, in rugby history. When I mention Nepia my new friend Eddie glows with pride, as he even had some family ties with that icon of Maori rugby, who died in 1986. I mention a photo I had recently seen at an exhibition. An almost octogenarian George Nepia is greeting the crowd at a rugby stadium. The story is great. In 1982 Nepia had travelled to Wales accompanying the New Zealand Maori team. Before a game at St Helen’s ground in Swansea the crowd spotted him in the sideline and started to point at him and whisper. By the time the speaker announced that he was present, the whole stadium was already standing, cheering and singing, and gave him a spontaneous five minute ovation. An overwhelmed Nepia, dapper in a dark coat and a scarf, came to the field and tipped his hat to the crowd. He had not been in Wales since the 1924 invincibles tour fifty eight years earlier and most of the 32,000 people at the stadium had not even been born then, but they surely recognized one of rugby’s greatest. Peter Bush, a Kiwi photographer who followed the All Blacks for decades, was there to capture one of the most emotive moments in the history of the sport.


By the time I have finished telling the story of that photo Eddie’s eyes seem to be slightly watery, so I turn to my beer to avoid an awkward moment. When I look at him again after taking a long sip, a single tear is running down his cheek.





See the full reportage and more photos of rugby in New Zealand in my website.

Sunday, November 11, 2018

SAHRAWI: THE CHILDREN OF THE CLOUDS

(This story was first published in the now defunct Inquire magazine. All photos and text copyright Nacho Hernandez. All rights reserved)



“They call themselves the children of the clouds because, since times past, they have been chasing clouds for their water. For more than thirty years now they have also been chasing justice which, in today’s world, seems more elusive than water in the desert”.  - Eduardo Galeano


© Nacho Hernandez

On two different occasions I travelled to the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria and to the section of the Western Sahara not occupied by Morocco. There, I had the opportunity to spend time with refugees, with members of the Polisario Front, with soldiers and with Bedouins living in the desert. I was particularly struck by the dignity of a people struggling to survive, and by the generosity of those who have almost nothing. The Sahrawi are a very welcoming and friendly people who have often been pushed to the losing end of history. This is their story.



*  * *

In the past, the nomadic tribes from the Western Sahara were referred to as "Awlad al-Muzna", the Children of the Clouds. Bedouins who for centuries roamed the desert with their herds of camels and goats, following the rain-laden clouds that for them could mean the difference between survival and death.


The Sahrawi, able to live in one of Earth's most hostile environments, had their way of life changed dramatically with the arrival of the colonial powers in the 19th century. By the early 20th century France and Spain had split the northwest of Africa and drawn artificial borders on the desert's sand. A people used to living without frontiers had to respect those imposed by the European countries. The Sahrawi were told that they were now Spanish. Their land had become the Spanish Sahara.

In 1975, with Spain’s Generalísimo Franco in his deathbed, King Hassan II of Morocco organized the multitudinous Green March to claim the Western Sahara. Hundreds of thousands of Moroccan civilians advanced south towards the border. To increase the pressure on the Spanish government, they were instructed to camp a few hundred meters away from the Spanish landmine fields and artillery. A weak Spain, unable to sustain its colonial adventure, agreed in the Madrid Accords to forsake the Western Sahara and to its partition between Morocco and Mauritania. Their armies immediately stormed in to split the former Spanish colony. Morocco occupied the northern two thirds of the territory and Mauritania the southern one. Nationalistic ambition aside, both countries had their eyes on the prize: a territory the size of England with the largest deposits of phosphates in the world, very rich fisheries and, possibly, plenty of oil under its surface. The Sahrawi were now told that they were Moroccan. Or Mauritanian.

The fledgling Sahrawi resistance movement against the Spaniards, the Frente Popular para la Liberación de Saguia el Hamra y Río de Oro or Polisario Front, saw one colonial power replaced by another and turned its guns from the retreating Spanish troops to the advancing Moroccan and Mauritanian columns. As a government in exile, the Polisario Front founded the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic in Bir Lehlou in February 1976.

It was the beginning of a fierce war that for sixteen years would tinge the sands of the Western Sahara with blood. After a series of military defeats that included humiliating raids by the Polisario against its capital Nouakchott, Mauritania signed a peace agreement and renounced all territorial claims in 1979. Morocco immediately seized all territories abandoned by the retreating Mauritanians. The Polisario Front, now backed by an Algeria playing its own chess game with Morocco for supremacy in Northern Africa, carried out a desert guerrilla war against Morocco which resulted in a number of military advances. Morocco reacted by erecting a fortified wall across the whole territory from north to south - at 1,700 miles the longest in the world -- effectively blocking Polisario
raids and creating a stalemate in the war. In 1988 the Polisario and Morocco accepted a UN and Organization of African Unity proposal for a ceasefire, to be followed by a referendum on independence among the Sahrawi.

© Nacho Hernandez
The ceasefire started in August 1991, only a few days after a fierce offensive by Moroccan troops in Tifariti. It was the end of the war but, for the Sahrawi, the aftermath would not be any better. The conflict had displaced half of their population to refugee camps near the Algerian border town of Tinduf or to exile in other countries. Two thirds of the Western Sahara's territory including its cities, its coast, all its natural resources and half of its population remained under Moroccan occupation. The rest, the barren "Liberated Territories" on the other side of the Moroccan Wall, are to this day controlled by the Polisario Front. Although the ceasefire is still in effect, the referendum on independence never took place, with Morocco perpetuating a status quo that plays in its favor. The UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice have sanctioned the right of the Sahrawi people to decide whether they want to become an independent country, but such referendum is constantly denied by Morocco. Talks between Morocco and the Polisario Front are still held sporadically, without any results. Today, the Western Sahara remains Africa’s last colony. 

The Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria are still at the center of the conflict. More than 35 years after the arrival of the first refugees, two generations of Sahrawis have been born and live a wretched existence in the sun-bleached camps of Tinduf, which are named after the cities left behind by their parents: Laayoune, Awserd, Smara and Dakhla. The camps are located in what has been aptly called the “desert’s desert” or the "devil's garden", a scorched, Sirocco-swept section of the Algerian Hammada where temperatures can easily exceed 50 °C in the summer and fall below freezing point during the winter nights. Almost nothing grows there and, although the very resilient Sahrawis have been able to organize life in the camps and have access to education and health care, they are completely dependent on international aid that is becoming less reliable each year. According to the World Food Program malnutrition in the camps is rampant, with chronic malnutrition at 31.4 percent. Over 60 percent of children and 54 percent of women suffer from anemia. What is worse for the refugees, though, is the lack of a future, the constant wait for a solution to their plight, a solution that never comes. A provisional arrangement has become permanent and the 150,000 Sahrawis in the camps are stuck in limbo.
© Nacho Hernandez

Those Sahrawis who didn’t flee to the refugee camps in Algeria or to exile in other countries live today in the Western Sahara under tight Moroccan control. They struggle in the face of a powerful Morocco that does not hesitate to use repression and violence to quash any efforts by the Sahrawi to reassert their own identity. This identity is also being diluted with the constant influx of Moroccan settlers who are lured with incentives offered by the Moroccan government to those willing to relocate to their so-called "Southern Provinces". Dramatically for the Sahrawi, this would tip the balance in favor of Morocco if the referendum ever happened. Morocco might allow the referendum to take place only if they were absolutely certain that they would win it. This would allow them to give a veneer of legitimacy to their annexation of the Western Sahara, while closing the dispute for good.

The war with Morocco also meant the final blow to a traditional nomadic way of life that had once been a sign of identity and the backbone of Sahrawi culture. The wall that divides the country also impedes the free movement of the Bedouins and their herds, as do the thousands of landmines and unexploded cluster bombs scattered around the Western Sahara, one of the territories with the highest concentration of unmapped bombs and mines in the world. The best pastures and wells also fall on the Moroccan-occupied side. While in the occupied Western Sahara the Sahrawi culture and identity are being watered down, the Liberated Territories are becoming the last redoubt of a nation without a country. The Polisario is trying to repopulate this barren section of the Western Sahara. They have symbolically maintained its capital in Bir Lehlou, a small village in the desert, and celebrate some of their meetings in Tifariti, a village charged with symbolism as the theater of some of the fiercest battles during the war. Some Sahrawi families are still trying to live as nomadic shepherds in this territory. This allows them to feed on healthier animals and fresher milk than what they have in the refugee camps. It also sends to the world and to Morocco the message that part of the Western Sahara is still inhabited and controlled by the Sahrawi, who intend to cling to their land.
© Nacho Hernandez

The conflict in the Western Sahara is probably one of the most under-reported crises of our days. It has been addressed very superficially by the international media and public opinion during its 35-year history. Few voices are raised in defense of the Sahrawi. Few challenge the existence of a wall in the desert, a 1,700-mile scar in the face of the Western Sahara that separates a land from half of its people and divides thousands of families. Celebrities rarely include the Sahrawi refugee camps in their goodwill tours. Countries, institutions and individuals who rushed to support the independence of Timor Leste, Kosovo or South Sudan turn a blind eye towards the Western Sahara and let Morocco get away with its abuses and disregard of international resolutions, in a perfect show of realpolitik at its worst. 

Those supporting Morocco will claim that the Western Sahara is too small to become an independent country, and that it would turn into a rogue state. Stressing recent Islamic terrorist activity in Northern Africa or the radical Islamization of Northern Mali, they insinuate a collaboration between Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Polisario, and insist that an independent Western Sahara would become a haven for Islamic terrorists within Europe's doors. This innuendo obviously benefits Morocco. The truth is that the Polisario as an organization has always rejected any form of terrorism and they have never appeared in the US State Department or EU's lists of terrorist organizations.

The Sahrawi, in general, practice a very moderate and tolerant form of Islam. The role of women for example is more important in Sahrawi society than in most Muslim countries. In reality, a disenchanted Sahrawi population in the Western Sahara and in the refugee camps, feeling that they have been totally forsaken by the countries who created this situation in the first place, is probably a much better breeding ground for the Islamist terrorists' cause than an independent country, owner of its own destiny, satisfied and in good terms with its neighbors. Moreover, if unresolved, this for now low-intensity conflict risks erupting into a full-fledged war again. The dissatisfaction among the Sahrawi population is growing both in the Western Sahara and in the Tinduf refugee camps, and many are increasing the pressure on their military to take up arms again. The current situation of "neither war nor peace" favors Morocco, and the Polisario might feel the need to change the status quo and shake things as their only way to keep their struggle alive.


* * *

By the end of my trip around the Liberated Territories we stop at a Bedouin family's camp. A few modest jaimas planted in the middle of a martian landscape of breathtaking beauty. With desert hospitality they invite us to have dinner with them and to spend the night in one of their tents. Brahim, the patriarch, is a man of imposing dignity. With his grey beard he reminds me of a mature Sean Connery in his prime. He lives in the desert with his extended family, herding camels and goats. We nibble on goat butter with dates and later dine on couscous. After dinner, while preparing the customary Sahrawi tea, Brahim tells me his story. He was a soldier with the Polisario and fought the war against Morocco. He was captured and spent fourteen years in a Moroccan prison in terrible conditions. His house and possessions in Smara were occupied and seized by Moroccans. Without any animosity towards me, he asks why the Spaniards let the Western Sahara down, after first claiming that it was a Spanish province. I don't know how to respond.


In the clean desert night, if you are close enough to the Moroccan Wall, you might be able to see a tiny glimpse of the lights from Smara, the Sahrawi holy city, reflected in the sky in the distance. Brahim wonders if he will be able to go back one day, and says that he would join the army again in a heartbeat to fight for it. He lets out a sigh and serves the tea in the traditional desert way: "The first glass bitter like life; the second one, sweet like love; the third, gentle like death".

© Nacho Hernandez




Sunday, October 28, 2018

Pancho Amat: Cuban trova and jazz

A while ago, in Madrid. The great Pancho Amat with his "tres"on fire. A beautiful fusion of Cuban trova and jazz, with the virtuoso Javier Colina on the bass. Sometimes, you just need to look at the feet...



Tuesday, April 03, 2018

A Villa in Manila

A mix of images and video I shot for the Wall Street Journal. Brings back many good memories...


Saturday, February 24, 2018

The Calcutta Cup at Murrayfield, Edinburgh


© Nacho Hernandez

Edinburgh after a rare Scottish victory against England at the Calcutta Cup. Flags and pipers everywhere. It will be a long night. A rugby match between England and Scotland is about more, much more than rugby.


© Nacho Hernandez

© Nacho Hernandez


See more photos of Rugby in Scotland in my website.



Thursday, February 22, 2018

Madrid airport, Barajas


At the Madrid airport, going through a kaleidoscope. Or, like Alice, falling through a rabbit hole. At the end of the tunnel, Edinburgh.


© Nacho Hernandez

Tuesday, January 09, 2018

Ava Gardner´s thighs




I'm one of those who believe they don´t make women like Ava Gardner anymore. Whoever called her "the world's most beautiful animal" was not exaggerating. Or maybe just a little bit. Ava Gardner could look at any man in the eye and make him go crazy; abandon family, job and everything for just one more glimpse of paradise. Follow her to perdition and be happy about it. I don't even care if she was a good or a bad actress.

The other day I was having dinner with some friends at a very old restaurant in Madrid. While we wolfed down a stew of bull's tail, the owner was telling us stories about the restaurant in the 50s, its golden era, when it was a meeting point for bullfighters, then demi-gods in Spain, and their friends and admirers. Among them the ubiquitous Ernest Hemingway, of course. Ava Gardner, who enjoyed very much the company of bullfighters, was usually there too.

Our new friend, the owner, was reminiscing about the parties they organized for these people, when he was just a shy teenager full of zits, recently landed in the big city and working at the restaurant as an apprentice waiter. An old signed photo of Ava Gardner followed our discussion from the wall, big tell-story rings under her eyes. "She knew how to party" he said looking at the photo, a sudden spark in his tired eyes and his mind flying back more than fifty years. "I remember seeing her dance in the center of this room". Small pause. "The way she flashed her thighs".

Long pause.

"Those were the very first woman thighs I had seen in my life".

Not a bad start, we all agreed.

Monday, October 16, 2017

All Blacks: premio Princesa de Asturias de los Deportes 2017




My reportage on rugby in New Zealand was published last Sunday in El País Semanal (EPS), the week-end magazine of the Spanish newspaper El País.

The All Blacks have been awarded the 2017 Princesa de Asturias award for the sports, one of the most prestigious distinctions in the world. No award was ever more deserving than this. How can a country with a population of barely four million people dominate a sport the way the All Blacks dominate international rugby?  In order to find out (and to capture it in photos), I travelled around the country for months, photographing rugby teams of all ages and levels. For a former rugby player like myself this was like a pilgrimage to the rugby Mecca. In New Zealand rugby is more a religion than a game.

You can see my photos of rugby in New Zealand in my website.

Friday, September 08, 2017

The colors of Madrid

Photographers, like criminals, tend to go back to the "scene of the crime". We like to go back to a place where we have found a good photo before, or where we think we can find one. I like to go back to this corner, near my home, by the supermarket where I buy food regularly. Specially late in the afternoon I love the combination of warm colors and shadows. Then, once you have your stage, it is just a matter of "waiting for something to happen".

© Nacho Hernandez

After many years in the Philippines, I am now back working as a photographer in Madrid. I'll be adding more photos from Madrid and Spain to my website.

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Easter Island

Many years ago I spent some time in Easter Island. One day, with a rented jeep, I visited this part of the island, the quarry where Moais where carved before being moved to other areas. Luck or fate, I was the only visitor. Not one single tourist in sight. I decided to sleep there, in the car, and got to visit these beauties in the middle of the night, under a full moon, all by myself. I swear I heard them whisper. Magical.


© Nacho Hernandez

More travel photography in my website.



Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Paeng Nepomuceno


Before Manny Pacquiao, there was another multi-world-champion Filipino. Rafael "Paeng" Nepomuceno, from Manila, has won the World Cup of Bowling four times. He won it in three different decades and is the youngest bowler to have won it (at age 19). He is considered the greatest bowler of all times. The Michael Jordan of bowling.


Paeng Nepomuceno training in Manila      © Nacho Hernandez

More photos of the Philippines in my website.

Friday, July 07, 2017

Casa Labra, Madrid.


Back in my hometown, Madrid, I am revisiting my favorite places in town. One of them is Casa Labra, one of the oldest taverns in Madrid. It is famous for its fried cod and its cod croquettes, perfect with a vermut for the aperitivo. Casa Labra is also famous because the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) was funded here in 1879, during a clandestine meeting of workers. Will it last 138 more years? Well, Casa Labra might; their cod is really delicious. The PSOE? After seeing their current leaders in action, I have my doubts.

Casa Labra                                                                                                                                     © Nacho Hernandez

Do you need a photographer in Madrid? Get in touch!

Friday, June 09, 2017

Back in Spain


So, after many years roaming around I'm back in Spain and in one of my favorite cities in the world. It also happens to be my hometown: Madrid. Probably a good time to relaunch this blog of mine too.

Happy to change my title and to be, again, a freelance photographer in Spain. From my base in Madrid I'll be covering Spain, Portugal, Southern Europe and the Mediterranean. Do get in touch if you need a photographer in this part of the world.


A coffee at the Circulo de Bellas Artes.                                                                                              © Nacho Hernandez



Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Rugby World Cup 2015 (RWC2015): 1st week


I am in England to continue working on my photos of English rugby, or on my rugby project, in general. A rugby world cup is, of course, the perfect opportunity to capture some images of rugby fans from all around the world. They are, at the end of the day, as important to rugby as the players themselves.

One week (and a few days) into the Rugby World Cup 2015, here are some of my favourite photos so far.

I spent the last few days in Wales, but that deserves its own post. Coming soon.

All photos © nacho hernandez

© nacho hernandez


© nacho hernandez


© nacho hernandez

© nacho hernandez

© nacho hernandez

© nacho hernandez

© nacho hernandez

© nacho hernandez