If You Here His Voice, Open Your Heart

• Photographer
  Alfons Cabrera
• Technical Info
  Sony A7iii
• Photo Date
  Second half 2023

Sant Jaume is vibrant and welcoming and dirty and old. It’s the poorest quarter in France, and it’s been inhabited by Catalan gypsies for more than 2 centuries. Sant Jaume is in the old town of Perpignan, capital of French Catalonia. After centuries of repression, the Catalan language is barely spoken today. However, Catalan is the only language in the streets of Sant Jaume, and the gypsies feel like outsiders in their own land and disdained by French institutions (and forgotten by southern Catalans). They also struggle with drug dealers, unemployment and many children not attending school.

Born in Barcelona in 1982, after graduating in Medicine, I got my life straightened out: I studied Photography at IDEP Barcelona and Communication of Armed Conflicts at Complutense Univ. of Madrid. Since 2017, I have reported in Catalonia, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Morocco, Spain, Ukraine, Israel, Palestine, Dominican Rep, Haiti, Andorra and Monaco. I have published articles and photo essays on La Vanguardia, ABC, Vilaweb, Ara, ABC, Descifrando la Guerra, Cultura Inquieta and Brecha, and my pictures have been on Wall Street Journal, BBC, CNN, 20 Minutes, Dagbladet and Zeit, among many others.