The Municipal Library presents ‘El mar en las manos’, a documented exhibition on the Barbate traps, through the lens of José Benítez Contreras from Estepona.

The exhibition will remain at the Municipal Library, located in the Padre Manuel Cultural Center, from March 30 to April 12, and can be visited from 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., with free access.

Estepona City Council informs that the Municipal Library, located in the Padre Manuel Cultural Center, will present next Monday, March 30 ‘The sea in the hands’, a documented exhibition on the Barbate traps, through photographs of the lens of José Benítez Contreras, from Estepona.

In the early nineties, José Benítez Contreras was invited to embark on the trap of Barbate, an ancient ritual that is repeated every year off the coast, between April and June, and documented with his camera the whole process of a tuna levantá. Some of these photographs were published in May 2000 in the bilingual magazine LOOKOUT and, thirty years later, are now on display for the first time in the showcases of the María Zambrano Hall of the Municipal Library in his hometown.

The exhibition, which can be seen until April 12 during the Library’s usual opening hours, from 8:30 am to 8:30 pm, is divided into four display cases, and connects this age-old tradition with the local fishing history. The first display case presents the almadraba as a fishing system – its three thousand year history, from the Phoenicians to the current European regulations – with a specific connector that reminds us that Estepona had its own almadraba until the 1990s. The second focuses on the men: the effort, the preparation, the faces. The third one documents the central moment of the fishing, the levantá and the collection, with the most extraordinary images of the series. And the fourth and last showcase is dedicated entirely to Estepona: six historical postcards of the port and the beach of La Rada -ca. 1960-1978-documenting local artisanal fishing life, before the tourist transformation.

“It was very exciting to see this so close. I wanted to leave it in photography. I want to share with you what I have captured in photographs,” says the author.

The sea in the hands’ is completed with a bibliographic collection selected from the funds of the Municipal Library, which includes reference works on traditional fishing, seafaring ethnography and Mediterranean species, as well as the book ‘Encounter with Estepona’, by Manuel Sánchez Bracho, who was the photographer’s teacher and Councillor for Culture of the City Council when, in 1985, was edited’ the first book of local poetry, ‘With Words’, in which José Benítez Contreras participated as a novelist.

With this exhibition, the Municipal Library is consolidated as a center of interest that combines documentary photography, historical postcards and bibliographic collection to bring the visitor closer to one of the oldest fishing practices in the Mediterranean: the almadraba.