From his first visit to Spain in 1987 photographer James Blake has been back in the country on more than ten different occassions. As a result James has now travelled as far north as Portbou on the Spanish-French border and as far south as Ayamonte on the Spanish-Portuguese border, and almost everywhere else along the east coast in between. Apart from having beautiful weather most of the year and a long and ancient history, and at times complex and informative, Spain is also full of relaxed, friendly locals, and a lot of amazing Christian art and architecture, or so it seemed to an Protestant Englishman at least.

Hopefully these photographs, that were taken whilst James lived, on and off, in Sant Carles De La Rapita, at the southern most, coastal tip, of Catalunya between 2017 and 2018, capture an essence of what Spain is really all about - being a very interesting place indeed, even now, nearly 100 years after it was visited by the writers Hemingway and Orwell during the Spanish Civil War ... a period of time that seems to still haunt the country to this day, especially in the context of Catalunya's desires for independence.