‘Hunger and Austerity’ in Spain

A couple of weeks ago Spaniards were shown some photos of themselves in the New York Times, and many didn’t like what they saw. The photographer: A certain Samuel Aranda.

The images the Times ran, in slideshow format on its international web page, depict, in black and white, a desperate and no doubt destitute family on the verge of being evicted from an apartment, a man scrounging for food in a trash container, some of Spain’s white-elephant construction projects now lying half finished and abandoned, a packed soup kitchen, angry street protests over government cutbacks, immigrants squatting in an empty factory, and more.

Taken together, this is hardly the face any country wants to put forward. Spaniards have complained, rightly, that the photos don’t tell the whole story. Spain isn’t all poverty and desperation. Easy proof: go out on any evening in Barcelona or Madrid or Bilbao and you will find most restaurants packed with diners, and not just diners visiting from other countries.

An economist recently told me that while it’s true that Spain’s macro-numbers are grim – unemployment near 25 percent and double that for young people, with an economy set to shrink again this year, by 1.3 percent according to the IMF – there is still a lot of money in this country. Trillions in savings. His point was that Spain still has fat to burn, even amongst the middle classes.

But Aranda’s photos focused on the lower, working – or, increasingly, not-working – classes. And while those in deep poverty, in need of food, are a minority, that minority is growing. Underscoring that point today, the Spanish Red Cross is launching a campaign to help this country’s malnourished, for the first time ever. Here’s the campaign, in Spanish:

The Spanish Red Cross says it wants to reach some 300 thousand more people this year. That’s on top of the roughly two million it helped last year. What’s changing isn’t just the numbers. The Red Cross has been mostly helping immigrants since Spain’s economic crisis began four years ago. Now, the organization says, most folks who come seeking nourishment are Spanish.

Interestingly, the Red Cross campaign has not provoked the same outrage as the New York Times photo essay, although both are making essentially the same basic point: more and more Spaniards are in real trouble. Why attack the Times and not the Red Cross? I think, in part, it’s because no one likes to be criticized by outsiders.

So the angry reaction to Samuel Aranda’s photos goes on. The conservative Spanish daily newspaper, ABC, has a slideshow up and running on its website called “What the New York Times Didn’t See, or Didn’t Want to See,” in which readers send in happy, pretty images of life in Spain today. They include nice sunsets and bullfights, a high-speed train (Spain is one of the world’s largest producers) and a green field with children playing.

Look, America, goes the slideshow’s message, things aren’t so bad here. You might do better to turn the cameras on yourself.

What seems to be lost on those most offended by the New York Times piece is the Times, and other papers and magazines, do send photographers into American cities to do similar work. So do Spanish papers, for that matter.

Also, a journalistic photo essay, by definition, can’t paint a complete portrait of a nation, and doesn’t try to. Instead, most set out to highlight an injustice or a problem that ought to be addressed by our leaders. For that we should be grateful, even if the images hurt.

And one final irony. The NYT photos rankling the pride of so many Spaniards were shot by none other than a Spaniard. Samuel Aranda is an awarding-winning shooter, from Barcelona.

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