Virginia Villacisla: Presencio & The Rural Kids

Through a series of intimate, vibrant images charged with memory, the author portrays a group of young people in Presencio—a village in Burgos with 200 inhabitants—a place deeply linked to her own personal and family history. This work offers an insider’s perspective, devoid of artifice or condescension, on what it means to grow up in a community within a rural environment shaped by exodus and transformation.

The work captures how these youths, before becoming adults with responsibilities, interact with the rural spaces inherited from their parents. It is an escape from the world into a limbo of an undefined future: the wild, the instinctive, the frenzy, the freedom. Coexisting with this is something more complex, lacking any apparent logic, buried deep within these bonds. They are rooted in identity, in upholding the memory and reputation of their ancestors in order to take their place. They are tied to a specific territory: a love for one’s fellow countryman and throwing stones at the guy from the next village over.