Stop desnonaments (Stop evictions)

There was a major wave of evictions in Spain in 2013. The dire consequences for the affected families sparked social outrage. As a result, there was a spate of demonstrations to demand debt cancellation and other measures. Later the same year, the European Union Court of Justice ruled that Spanish legislation in this regard breached EU Law.

Given that this situation was hitting the lower classes, Miró included this work of denunciation in his Mani-Festa series. In the picture, a small group of demonstrators serves to represent the whole. One person stands out in the composition. She raises her arm, and shouts about the injustice. She does not occupy the central part of the image, but she assumes the predominance in her presence.

The hyper-realism with which the group of citizens are depicted coexists with the distortion of reality apparent in the background and in the placards. In order to focus on the social issue, Miró strips out any visual ‘noise’ from the background, which is rendered in a flat, bright red. Over this one can see the placards waved by the protestors. The texts, formats, and colours have been modified to make the messages easy to read.

The work combines homage to the real-life people who defended the interests of broad masses of defenceless citizens, and an act of propagandistic ‘enhancement’ of the scene, increasing its semiotic power by isolating the protest messages and stylising them. José María Iglesias had already spoken of the technique in earlier periods of Miró’s work: “he selects the image and he presents it in greater definition, by detaching it from its context, in order to boost its denouncing power and its formal attribute as a work of art.

Santiago Pastor Vila