Ribes de Freser

In 1993, while hiking in a rural area near Ribes de Freser (a municipality in the Ripollès region), Pablo Helguera saw an abandoned school in ruins. Inside, he found its classrooms still with some broken furniture, and in one section he saw a pile of school notebooks, images of which partially constitute this work. The grammar and calligraphy exercises in the notebooks, done by anonymous pupils in the 1940s, shortly after the Spanish Civil War and during the early years of Franco’s dictatorship, just after he proclaimed himself regent for life of Spain, are examples of the civic indoctrination function of the time. Ribes de Freser is an artist’s portfolio that mixes personal history with reflections on the relationship between education and democracy.