Querer volver, volver a querer
Cities grow every day, every hour. Endless and impersonal hives, provided with all the commodities that anyone might (or might think to) need.
Cities are like XX Century’s El Dorado, the only life choice that this greedy-for-growth society proposes to us.
In the meantime, small villages are beginning to vanish. There are more than 8.000 villages across Spain’s territory. Six in ten are at risk of extinction.
«Your small town» is now pushed aside, like a childhood memory or a summer at your grandparents’ house. Villages are like a bunch of weird banners scattered across the roads that connect big cities.
Oliete
Oliete is one of many Spanish villages affected by exodus. It went from having 3.000 inhabitants before the Civil War to a few more than 300 nowadays.
This neglect leads to empty streets, ruined houses and abandoned crop fields. «Apadrina un Olivo» is an NGO that is trying to reverse this situation. Their goal is to recover centenarian olive trees through individual sponsorship. There are now more than 4.000 recovered olive trees, but the road ahead is long: there are more than 100.000.
The design
These two words create a skin for the Almazara.
We create a colorful rhythm, in which sometimes the word «QUERER» is the one you can read better, some other is the word «VOLVER». But somehow they’re always connected because both words make sense here: «QUERER VOLVER» (returning desire). Coming back to our land, where our identity is born.
«VOLVER A QUERER» (to love again). To love again that land, which one day we forgot, as we were eaten up by the consumer society and big cities.
- 900 m2 olive oil press, painted during July 2019 in Oliete, Teruel
- Project funded entirely by NGO Apadrina un Olivo
- Thanks to Alberto, José Alfredo, Sira and all the team at Apadrina un Olivo, for their initiative with this necessary cause, and their hospitality
- Team Boa: Irene García, Blanca Sánchez-Molero
- Support at the studio: Clara González
- Photography by Boa Mistura