Cuadernos de Campo

Javier Vallhonrat focuses his gaze on the beauty, mystery and solidity of a centuries-old hydraulic system where human ingenuity allies with the secrets of nature. The fragility of water and how it is boldly guarded from the mountains to the fountains of the Royal Site of La Granja de San Ildefonso not only act as a compositional device, but become an allegory of how engineering determination imagines intelligent and innovative solutions to understand and preserve this essential element.

This exhibition connects deeply with ACCIONA’s business philosophy and its desire to ensure, with the precision and skill of a craftsman, that water is conserved at all stages of the cycle. There are an estimated 2.2 billion people in the world with problems of access to drinking water, making the sustainable management of this resource one of humanity’s main challenges. Through its innovative and technical potential, ACCIONA leads the water treatment sector with the design, construction and operation of drinking water treatment plants, wastewater treatment plants, reverse osmosis desalination plants and tertiary treatments for water reuse, benefiting more than 140 million people worldwide with its services.

This artistic project invites us to value and care for a unique natural site, as well as to vindicate regenerative engineering applied to water management, capable of leaving a positive impact on ecosystems and of sustainably managing this indispensable asset for present and future generations

Cuadernos de campo (Field Notebooks) is an ambitious project that brings the gaze, sensitivity and creativity of our country’s most outstanding visual artists into contact with the natural spaces of the Royal National Heritage Sites, an institution that conserves more than 18,000 hectares of great environmental richness and diversity.

Promoted by PHotoESPAÑA in collaboration with ACCIONA, the initiative has enabled three projects linked to the tercentenary of La Granja to be presented in 2024 in emblematic venues, two of them in Madrid, the Campo del Moro Gardens and the Cube of the Royal Collections Gallery (4 June to 29 September) and another installed in the Alfonso XII Galleries of the Royal Palace of La Granja (12 September to 15 December 2024).

The programme will run for three years with the aim of raising public awareness of a natural environment, partly unknown, whose beauty, fragility and uniqueness invite us to value and protect nature as a whole, as an ecosystem of which we are a part and a means of life on which we depend.