'I choose', by Fitz Florencia Duran
The first thing the Uruguayan artist asked Fitz Florence Duran when she considered painting the mural you see above these lines on a wall in the small Leonese town of La Baneza was whether the weight of censure would fall on her.
She was about to draw a gigantic woman who would shamelessly show her pubis, her legs and one of her nipples in a place inhabited by little more than 10,000 inhabitants, a town on the edge of the National VI and the Ruta de la Plata: the typical place in which the traveler may have stopped at some time to have a snack or relieve physiological urgencies but in which he rarely enters.
What has no one lost in transit between the Spanish Mojave desert, the Páramo, and that green and white massif that is the Sierra del Teleno? Well, among other things, **the Art Aero Rap urban art festival**.
La Bañeza is one of those places where life passes so slowly and calmly like the flocks of starlings that cross its blue skies on summer afternoons. The region where it is located is flat and smooth terrain of wide rivers dotted with poplars, a large orchard of beets that are finally turned into sugar.
The sonorous names of the towns will not remind you of anything, but each one of them guarantees placidity, perfect tracks for bicycle routes and rivers where you can take impromptu dips: Alija del Infantado, Cebrones del Río, Destriana, Palacios de la Valduerna, Quintana del Marco, Quintana and Congosto, San Cristóbal de Polantera, San Esteban de Nogales, Santa Elena de Jamuz, Villamontán de la Valduerna.
Here any alteration in the vital rhythm of the inhabitants is an anomaly, so there were more than good reasons to think that that exposed chest could generate scandal.
This is not Facebook, it is La Bañeza and there is no censorship here
But it didn't happen. “We asked the council for permission and they thought it was perfect. And the reception by the people has been very good too” . It is told by the person ultimately responsible for that drawing being there, the urban artist Antonio Muelas , which since 2013 organizes Art Aero Rap every August during the patron saint festivities of La Bañeza.
this pageant transforms the town into a large canvas and generates a very interesting contrast with the rest of the program of popular festivities, which includes a classic motorcycle race that, in turn, turns the streets of the town into a kind of quaint rural Monte Carlo. Engines idling vs. hissing sprays.
“We are a very tolerant people” , jokes Muelas. But it's not a joke. The mural has been there since last summer, it is titled I choose and symbolizes “the capacity and determination of women to make decisions about their bodies, their sexuality, their present and their future” , as explained by Florencia Durán herself.
East message so deep and so universal it rises like a kind of vision in this area of León where the plateau begins to intuit the proximity of Galicia but still has traces of dry land.
The most famous novelist of the town, the journalist resident in Madrid Martha of the Irrigation , she admits that she has been learning to enjoy year after year the appearance of these works , which she travels many times riding a bicycle.
She also explains the extraordinary effects that the vision of these works has had on the people of Bañeza: “There's something very democratic about graffiti: it's grand, it's public, it's easy to understand. I have seen children and I have seen the elderly, couples and adolescents, farmers and vacationers, contemplate the evolution of a graffiti artist on a scaffold”.
Not only that: assistant sound technicians such as the public help during the concerts, townspeople let them connect the light from their homes and some of the neighborhood communities of the buildings where the facades are painted collaborate financially to finance the barbecues with which artists eat
Even many of the neighbors lend their houses to the invited artists, that during the month of August, become inhabitants perfectly integrated into the festive life of the town, to which this initiative adds a cycle of music concerts where, of course, the protagonists are the sounds normally associated with graffiti, from the hip hop until the rap.
Why are we not going to be a benchmark in street art? You are right. Why not?
The initiative is very similar to the one launched five years ago in Salamanca the ZOES Neighborhood Association and the Lemarte Collective to revitalize the ** West neighborhood.**
The founder of Art Aero Rap admits that he did it with certain intention of revitalizing tourism in this area of the province , forgotten by administrations and travelers. He thought: “If in Astorga they have the cathedral and the episcopal palace designed by Antonio Gaudí, in Ponferrada they have the Templar castle and in León the Gothic cathedral… Why aren't we going to be a benchmark in street art?" Well, yes. Why not?
The Street Art United States website has agreed with him and last January chose this work as one of the ten most impressive murals of the year worldwide. There was this locality, in which the peasants cultivate the white bean and the butchers tan the cecina, measuring itself in a matter of street graffiti with some of the world's great metropolises.
"The urban excesses of La Bañeza in the 70s and 80s provide, on the other hand, very good material for graffiti artists: there are free-standing and tall houses, lots and walls... to expand in depth. I think it's a great initiative brings art closer to the rural world and gives it a fantastic, unreal touch” , explains Marta del Riego.
It is interesting and curious that even in such a small and radically rural population center, once again urban art, with its political voice and its ability to immediately transcend, has proven its ability to transform neighborhoods and places around the world. From Banksy's Free Zehra Dogan in New York to Florencia Durán's I choose in La Bañeza.
JOURNEY NOTEBOOK
The two great delicacies that you should give an account of if you visit? White beans and sausages: watch out for cecina. It's the tastiest you'll taste in the entire Northwest.
El Capricho Winery in Jiménez de Jamuz, 3 km from La Bañeza
A century-old winery, a typical construction excavated in the mud whose origin is Roman, where José Gordon serves the best meat in the world according to Time magazine, The Wall Street Journal or Vogue USA.
Jewelry Museum , La Baneza
It has a rich collection of traditional clothing and jewelry from León, Salamanca and Zamora of the 19th and 20th centuries. Embroidery, amulets against the evil eye or infertility, wedding suits, corals and jets...
Wine tourism route and wine and sausage tasting in Fuentes del Silencio , in Herreros de Jamúz (about 7 km from La Bañeza)
The most interesting route is the gold pan, in which they teach you how the Romans obtained the golden material l with the exploitation of the mountains by means of water.
Traditional food. cafe paris _(Juan de Mansilla Street, 28) _
If you want to taste the spicy frog legs or tripe as they have been cooked since time immemorial in La Bañeza, it is the best site. No frills, no big menus, no privileged setting: it's a bar. You have to book by phone (987643365). Everything the old fashioned way.
Could Banksy stop at La Bañeza? The answer is yes