El valor iconográfico de la colección <em>Catalunya Visió</em> (1968-1974). Entre la tradición y la modernidad

Abstract

Catalunya Visió is a collection published in Barcelona between 1968 and 1974 that was widely distributed and achieved much renown. Although each volume includes several counties of Catalonia, it is by no means a standard county monograph but rather an original combination of geographical description, travel literature and black-and-white photography. The accomplished descriptions of the landscape of the time, written by authors who were deeply sensitive to this subject, are complemented with images by well-known photographers, of superb artistic quality and great iconographic value. The texts and the photographs send out the same double message, despite using very different languages. On the one hand, the traditional landscape is shown to be giving way to a new landscape, that of the developmentist policies of the era, rural flight and the arrival of mass tourism. The other message, of a more political and cultural nature, is related to the claims for recognition of the Catalan national identity that re-emerge significantly in the 1960s during the final phase of the Franco regime.