marcia’s musings

People & landscapes in Almeria, Spain (c) Marcia Chandra 2009

This will be the first in a series of reflexive posts about a recent project I was working on over the spring break (for my MA at the London College of Communication we had to use the time to complete a photoessay project).

Almeria is in the south of Spain in the province of Andalucia (see map). If you look at the map in ’satellite’ view you will be able to see that the entire coast is virtually covered, from the mountains to the sea, in plastic greenhouses – often referred to as “the sea of plastic.” Among the primary products grown here are tomatoes, watermelon, melons and peppers, which are supplied throughout Europe.

Almeria is also one of the jumping-off points for immigrants from North and West Africa who arrive on boats everyday on the coast looking for a new life. Many of them find themselves stuck in Almeria for years until they can earn enough money or learn the language to be able to move on. The horticulture industry is, in fact, sustained by the labour of both illegal and legal immigrants who work on the fields for far below minimum wage and under unhealthy conditions. Native spanish labourers are rare as most of them gave up years ago due to low wages and poor working conditions, forcing the industry to go to Romania and Morocco to find temporary migrant workers to work the fields, and now it is more common to simply hire illegal immigrants that are already in Almeria. The system is complex, and the spanish are divided as to whether they support illegal immigration or not – without it, as one owner of 7 greenhouses told us, the industry would have a hard time finding labour. At the same time, however, no one is eager to act in defense of immigrants as the system depends on virtual servitude labour, on people who are desperate to find work, have almost no rights and even less knowledge about them.

I am just starting to get my head around it all and think about how to move forward. I went to Almeria out of spontaneous curiousity after some other projects I was working on in Granada were dying before they even started. I only spent 3 1/2 days there (its all I had left) but in that time I was lucky to have met so many beautiful people that showed me around and talked to me about their experiences. I’m handing something in for this school project, but the story is incomplete – I want to go back and work more on it over this year.

- London, UK, 15 degrees Celsius, hazy sunny sky, listening to La Cherga ‘Fake No More’