The Museu del Suro de Catalunya presents 'Costa Esbravada' by Miquel Riera

The journalist Miquel Riera (Torroella de Montgrí, 1960) presents the Costa Esbravada exhibition where he reviews and gives his particular view on the constructive barbarities perpetrated from the 1950s to the present day on the Girona coast, from Portbou to Blanes. The exhibition can be seen at the Museu del Suro de Catalunya, in Palafrugell, from January 20 to March 3, 2024.

"The Costa Brava has been degraded by the unconsciousness of an inconsiderate construction effort and an incongruous legal framework. The lack of human sense and love for the earth has often meant that building was destroying", said Josep Ensesa i Montsalvatge, son of the founder of S'Agaró and first president of the Tourism Board, back in 1977 of the Costa Brava.

Narcís-Jordi Aragó, journalist and one of the promoters of the Costa Brava Debate in 1976, considered, in an article on the occasion of the centenary of the Costa Brava in 2009, that "what was the argument for the tourist brand he has often been despised, threatened and assaulted".

Jordi Sargatal, ornithologist and naturalist, first director of the Aiguamolls de l'Empordà Natural Park, went even further, and in an article published in 2013 he advocated that no more should be built on the Costa Brava. "Everything makes it advisable to say enough, and the most sensible thing would be not to damage even one more square centimeter of the Costa Brava, nor of the Catalan coast", he wrote.

Based on these premises and a work that has lasted for more than a year and a half, Miquel Riera has traveled the entire Costa Brava trying to photograph with his camera the less friendly side of Girona's coastline. Those developments and buildings, often erected in the early years of tourism, but also in recent times, and which have littered the Costa Brava.

"It is not an exhaustive work, although we have about fifteen hundred photographs, and this was not the intention either, but to focus on what has a real impact on the landscape. This is the intention. And by the way try to make the public aware of the need to protect our Costa Brava even more than it is," says Miquel Riera.

Thirty photographs can be seen in the exhibition at the Museu del Suro, while up to sixty will be projected on a television screen. "There are not all the towns and even some municipalities that have several. I have prioritized the ones I liked the most and the ones that, for me, had the most impact", explains the journalist.

Coinciding with the exhibition, different parallel events have been organized. So on February 9, the documentary 'The limits of the Costa Brava' by Antoni Martí will be shown, which presents the opinions of different personalities who in 2003 gave their vision on the future of the Costa Brava. On February 16, the debate 'Costa Brava. costa esbravada?', with the participation of Juli Fernández, mayor of Palafrugell, Albert Llausàs, from the Geography department of the UdG and Eduard de Ribot, from SOS Costa Brava.

The exhibition is held with the support of the Friends of the Girona Art Museum, the Palafrugell Magazine, under the umbrella of Foto Torroella and with the collaboration of SOS Costa Brava, the entity that in recent years has raised the most the voice against aggression on the Girona coast. The organization is in charge of the Museu del Suro and Palafrugell Town Hall. The inauguration will be on January 20, at 7.30pm, by Lluís Poch, director of the Palafrugell Magazine.