Just Browsing

I love this - it’s like a defiant joy. Such celebration in the face of obstacles is always inspiring. But it also reminds me that obstacles themselves are important in life - because don’t they make the joy all that much sweeter?

Immigrant picnics, like immigrant lives, are enjoyed on the run from ever-more repressive police. In Casa de Campo, Madrid’s biggest park, Ecuadorian families come together every Sunday despite harassment by the authorities.

One moment there are hundreds of people thronging the field, music playing, everyone laughing, plátanos frying in skillets of fat, matrons ripping off generous hunks of roasted pork and piling them onto plates with mote (a sort of hominy), avocados and salad…and then suddenly they’re not there. The skillets have disappeared, the butane stoves have vanished, there is no sign of a whole roast pig anywhere, only a certain concentration of mostly Ecuadorian people looking defiantly nonchalant as they wander away. A few women wheel conspicuously large babies in covered carriages. It’s a weekly magic trick.