Timeless Moments. A Research Stay at the University of Salamanca

Five years, a pandemic and a gender transition have passed since I got a student mobility opportunity through the SEP-UNAM-FUNAM research methods training scholarship, which enabled me to study at the Iberoamerican Institute of the University of Salamanca (USal), Spain. I participated in a bimonthly research stay at its Faculty of Geography. My research focused on the construction of photographic landscape images, exploring them through the perspectives of migrants and non-male individuals. 

It was 2018, when I crossed an ocean for the very first time. As I developed my degree project, I found myself also questioning my identity and how it shaped my perception of the world around me. I arrived at the USal School of Geography to develop my research under the guidance of Dr. María Teresa Paliza Monduate. However, due to health issues, she was unable to continue advising me and I continued my stay under the supervision of Dr. Luis Alfonso Hortelano Mínguez, head of the master’s program in Evaluation and Management of Cultural Heritage. This unexpected turn of events placed me in a position of great freedom and autonomy. Dr. Hortelano provided me with a personal office to work in and granted me access to classes of the master’s degree he directs. He also arranged for me to participate in a couple of field trips throughout the region of Castilla and León. The research took a completely autonomous path. 

Salamanca, being a city with a large student population where many come from outside, fosters the formation of supportive communities among students. From the start, the autonomy that surrounded my stay made me feel like I was navigating alone. This led me to connect with an online friend who had previously studied at the USal and she became my first (long distance) guide. As my research took on a more social nature, it wasn’t long before I found groups online with whom I felt a deep sense of kinship, as we were all in the process of shaping our identities.  
I met Iguales USal, the feminist group Akelarre Salamanca and the Anti-Speciesism Association of Salamanca. Sharing spaces with these communities generated a network of people who, like me, were also dissidents of heteronormativity and the societal norms that derived from it. That was enough to unite our diversities and recognize ourselves in a foreign territory. 

My research began to revolve around the landscapes, cartographies and spaces that I shared with the people who had gathered in diversity. We routinely met in shared apartments, parks, the social center or libraries, where we created independent graphic content, shared communal meals, and discussed films in our film club. I soon understood that in Salamanca one must fill out forms to request the accompaniment of the Civil Guard for manifestations; that the suburbs there are known as “pentagons”, and local businesses close from two to four in the afternoon for the siesta (nap). These observations were not in vain, as they were building the visual landscape that shaped my context at the time. 

As the first in my family to visit a foreign country, I received constant requests for photographs from my mother. However, I rarely responded with digital images of traditional monuments or tourist postcards, as my daily life consisted of immersing myself in other types of architecture and locations: music and alternative art festivals, community dinners in the autonomous social center, and explorations of the periphery of Salamanca. 

Despite sharing classrooms and spaces with fellow university students from my institution, my gender identity often set me apart when I sought to build connections within those circles. I observed that my transit through the streets, my search for safe spaces, and my grasp of the present were a blend of the outsider’s experience felt by migrants living in precarious legal situations and the perception of an academic travel, who usually enjoys greater freedom supported by institutions that facilitate research and production of knowledge. It was curious to enjoy certain advantages I had as a scholarship holder, such as student discounts, access to institutional mail, and to the scientific database of the Iberoamerican Institute—although I did not have access to the home loan because I did not have official university registration. 

Everything I experienced profoundly altered my perception of the landscape. The visual references I encountered during my journey, no matter how mundane or diverse, always resonated with the unique perspective of a sexual dissident migrant. It is worth mentioning that the librarian of the Iberoamerican Institute became a crucial part of my support network. Through regular handwritten commitment vouchers and with my university course credentials, they allowed me to borrow books for a few days, including the recently published poetry collection, Aunque dure un instante (If It Lasts Just an Instant), by Claribel Alegría, winner of the 26^th Queen Sofía Prize for Iberoamerican Poetry. 

So, over the course of two months, alongside my freelance collaborations, I embarked on short trips that allowed me to have glimpses of different places, such as the remnants of the Santander Mediterráneo railway, a project embedded in the local landscape through oral narratives safeguarded by those who defend its remains against looting and vandalism. I traveled as far as the mountainous border, where the fog announced that we had crossed into Cantabria, and I also set out in search of cave paintings in the Sierra de Francia, on the border with Extremadura, albeit with limited success. 

Among all these experiences, two achievements brought me particular satisfaction: firstly, the creation of the logo and the naming of the Anti-Speciesism Association of Salamanca, now known as “La Cerda”; and secondly, developing a project of printed photographic landscapes into postcards, which I distributed among the people with whom I had formed emotional connections and who had also arrived in Salamanca, in the hopes of making it too a part of themselves.

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