Manifestación en favor del Estatuto de autonomía. Barcelona, abril 1932 (Demonstration in Support of the Statute of Autonomy. Barcelona, April 1932)

The photograph shows Barcelona’s Plaza de Sant Jaume on the 24^th of April 1932, during a mass-demonstration for the Statute of Catalonia, which was finally approved in September that year. The flag flying above the crowds was added by the photographer, Gabriel Casas, who opened a portrait studio in 1917 and worked as a photojournalist from 1925, before becoming a well-known advertising photographer in the 1930s. He specialised in combining photographs into a single picture, a common procedure in the 19^th century known as ‘photomontage’ in the German Dada publications. Casas published his photomontages on political propaganda posters, in books and particularly in magazines like Imatges, Barcelona Gráfica and D'Ací i d'Allà.

Horacio Fernández