At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, many Spaniards left for the United States looking for a job opportunity which they did not have here. The exhibition ‘Invisible Emigrants. Spaniards in the US’ tells the story of all these people who were forced to emigrate in the hope of having a better future.

A traveling exhibition that is in Almería and that has 300 photographs, objects, documents and audiovisual materialto the. “But there were those who went to factories, there were those who went to agricultural jobs that were almost slavery,” explains James D. Fernández, a commissioner and grandson of Spaniards who immigrated to the United States.

During the first decades of emigration, everyone thought of returning after a few years, but they ran into the Civil War and its consequences. “That’s where they turn their backs on Spain a bit and think more about the American future of their children,” reveals James. A situation that begins to forget their origins.

“Because the children of those emigrants begin to assimilate the new culture and forget the Spanish language,” explains James D. Fernández. In fact, the Spanish communities in the United States. they break little by little its ties with Spain and its culture.

Luis Argeo, a curator and family member of Spaniards who emigrated to the United States, reveals that when his descendants returned to our country at the end of the 1980s, “they arrived finding the places of origin of their parents or grandparents as exotic spaces.”

Places, people and memories that erased the distance and also the war and who now remembers this exhibition.