Stranded

Playa de Zahora / Andalucia, February 2021

My friend Ramiro, coming from work on a film set in Madrid, picked me up in Sevilla, where I had arrived just on time with the last bus leaving Portugal towards Spain, after borders had been shut down. The spanish authorities would only let me enter the country ‘cause of my application for residency on Formentera. Puh! Lucky me…

And here I am, well stranded in this amazing country side of the wild south coast of Andalucia, where Ramiro lives since a few years, very close to the sea, renting out lovely tourist bungalows. Every morning I collect fresh oranges for the juice from the trees in front of his house, take daily walks on low tide by the beaches of El Palmar, Caños de Meca, Zahora or Mangueta and buy fresh fish from the local markets. I drive around on a borrowed mountainbike and get my ass and Mr P moving.

In big admiration, I watch the local surfers riding waves in front of El Palmar, but often they come out soon after they wasted a huge amount of power due to the strong currents and massiv waves hitting on them. One can not really judge from the shore what is really happening but once you‘re out there, you really know what you‘re dealing with.

At this time of the year, few helicopters fly around, not because of confinement rule controlling but of surveillance on immigration or drug trafficking. And because of the difficult sea and weather conditions, no boats with illegal immigrants arrive on the coast at this time of the year. This will change soon though and authorities will be confronted with stranded boats full of immigrants in dispair, as Africa is only a few kilometers away.

On the photograph above, I sit by a stranded boat that carried so many humans who either made it or died in the wild waters. That boat had been painted by local artists to remind us of one of Europe‘s biggest issue to be solved.

Where as I only need to solve my little issue of getting done a PCR test with the negative results just on time before flying to Ibiza and taking a ferry to Formentera.

In honor of the boat people