Chema Conesa, artistic curator, offers us an exhibition that resonates like an energetic step back in time. He brings together some fifty photographs by Benito Román, a Madrid-based photojournalist trained at the School of Applied Arts, whose precise, unpretentious gaze captures Spain caught between its traditions and a fierce desire to finally enter modernity. The itinerary lets us witness that fragile balance, when the country buoyed by the new constitution found new momentum.
At the time, Román did not chase the big events; instead, he seized the sidelines, the ordinary scenes we rarely look at. But through accumulation, these modest moments become the chronicle of a nation in transition. These images do not seek heroism; they let through what everyday life reveals when History accelerates. Between 1975 and 1985, Román caught that unprecedented tremor. A raw sensibility, without dramatization, that has become today a precious material for understanding what was at stake.
His photographs tell the story of a decade in which Spaniards rediscovered their own power, almost surprised by themselves. You can feel the pulse of a people who moved, in just a few years, from an authoritarian weight to a brighter, almost festive horizon. And it is this energy made of a mix of relief, euphoria, and impatience that runs through « La décennie prodigieuse(The prodigious decade) ».
It is hard to find, in the past century, a social and political moment as dense as this one. This sudden transition, which turned a locked-down country into a democratic laboratory, now appears like a mirage: recent in times, yet already distant in feeling. Looking at Benito Román’s photographs, we sense how much they act as a distorted but necessary mirror. They reflect everything Spain tried to forget and everything it managed to become.
Jean-Jacques Ader
« La décennie prodigieuse 1975-1985 » Exhibition by Benito Román at the Instituto Cervantes de Toulouse, 31 rue des Chalets, through January 30, 2026, free admission Monday to Friday, 2:30 pm to 6:30 pm. Information: https://toulouse.cervantes.es/fr/default.shtm
