A-hunting we will go

Santi, short for Santiago, is a neighbour of ours. And he’s introduced me to the delights of hunting.

The quarry of our quest

No, no. Not that kind of hunting. No animals were harmed in the making of this blog post. Santi doesn’t hunt living creatures, far less convert them into creatures whose living has abruptly ceased. He hunts graffiti, which continue to adorn the streets even after he’s been by.

It will come as no surprise that he does his hunting with a camera.

Santi on the hunt

He sets out on his quests on Sunday mornings. Sadly, the hunt isn’t usually over in time for him to make it to mass, but I have to confess that he seems not to be undergoing any great spiritual suffering as a result. Indeed, he seems satisfied enough with his photos to be easily reconciled to missing the words of his priest. How things will work out in the next world, of course, is anybody’s guess. 

Literally.

We’d spoken several times about my joining him on one of his excursions. Last week, while we had a son, a daughter-in-law and our second charming granddaughter with us, we went around to Santi’s for a drink or two. I’m using ‘or two’ in a euphemistic sense. Fortunately, I avoided the fate of Dorothy Parker in such circumstances:

I like to have a martini,

Two at the very most.

After three I'm under the table,

After four I'm under my host.

It may have helped that we weren’t drinking martinis. But what we were drinking lubricated me just enough to agree, at last, to hitting the road with Santi at 8:00 last Sunday.

That’s 8:00 in the morning, in case you were in any doubt about it. On the day of rest. I’ve got a commandment to prove that status.

The people we’ve come to know in and around Valencia provide powerful contradictory evidence to the suggestion that Spaniards tend to be unpunctual. Bang on time, more like. I stepped out of my door at 8:00, and Santi had already driven the few doors up the road from his gate to mine and was waiting for me to join him on the adventure.

The early hour is partly to avoid the worst of the heat, still a problem even in September. What’s more, that hour on that day of the week allows Santi to visit the graffiti while there are too few people around to keep walking in front of them and spoiling the photos.

Three things struck me more than anything else about the works we saw.

Firstly, that they really are a form of art. Some of the pieces we saw were extraordinarily powerful.

A blank wall overlooking wasteland:
just another canvas

The second is that it’s creativity for its own sake. We started at a place where the artists’ canvas was a blank factory wall looking out over wasteland. It’s hard to imagine more than a handful of people going there. Not all graffiti is so out of the way, but for the painting that are, I’m left wondering who sees the result of so much work? In such a place, probably only other graffiti artists and aficionados like Santi (and now me).

A blank wall overlooking wasteland
and already being prepared for over-painting

Finally, it’s truly ephemeral art. That factory wall in its wasteland was already being painted over in white at one end, ready for new images.

It’s wonderful. Art for its own sake. Lasting only as long as it lasts. Those who are enchanted need to get out and see it now, or they may miss it.

Only someone like Santi gives this creativity an existence beyond the shortest of times, as he preserves the paintings in his photos. He’s a true hunter. Not collecting trophies but building a record.

It was exhilarating. I’m going to have to go again, as it’s worth the price of an early start, even on a Sunday.

But perhaps not this Sunday. A week or two’s recovery is called for, I feel, to overcome the trauma of a start so early on the day of rest. But then – happy to go out hunting again.

Sunset, or possibly sunrise, over the Albufera lagoon
Cheering up a housing estate