García Rodero (Puertollano, 1949), National Photography Prize in 1996, Medalla de Oro to Merit in Fine Arts in 2005 and Medalla de Oro Awarded the Merit in Labor Award in 2014, among many other distinctions, he is an undisputed leader in contemporary photography. Since his beginnings, he has traveled thousands of kilometers in a constant search for images and subjects.

That beginning dates back to 1973, when the Juan March Foundation awarded him an artistic creation grant, which he used to buy his first equipment and spend a year traveling through the villages of Spain to document and preserve their festivals, ceremonies, rites, traditions, and ways of life: “I tried to photograph the mysterious, true, and magical soul of popular Spain, with its passion, love, humor, tenderness, anger, pain, with its truth; and the most intense and fulfilling moments in the lives of the people, as simple as they were irresistible, with all their inner strength, in a personal challenge that gave me strength and understanding and into which I poured my whole heart.” The result of that work was the series of photographs collected in Hidden Spain (1989), a book that captured the face and spirit of a very special moment in the country and became a fundamental milestone in the history of photography in Spain.

The documentary premiered in 2023 Cristina García Rodero. The Hidden Gaze, directed by Carlota Nelson and produced by Wanda Films, in which the photographer travels to places and parties, while reviewing her own life and experiences.

In 2024, fifty years after she received the grant that, in the photographer's words, "changed her life" and has allowed her "to spend fifty years making a dream come true," several institutions celebrate her work by organizing the exhibition Cristina García Rodero. Hidden Spain, which, starting in May 2024, will travel to several Spanish venues (Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, La Malagueta Cultural Center of the Malaga Provincial Council, Spanish Abstract Art Museum of Cuenca and Juan March Foundation Museum of Palma, IVAM Centre Julio González) and which will show the complete series of 152 photographs taken before 1989.

Image credits: In the ages. Escober. 1988. © Cristina García Rodero