Petit Grand Tour (2007-2008) is the first project in which Jorge Ribalta addressed the document/ monument dialectic and its connection with the historical production of a discourse on national identity implicit in cultural heritage and monuments. His case study here is the historical and archaeological site of Tarragona, a town founded by the Romans around 100 km south of Barcelona. The title of the series is inspired by the Grand Tour, the trip that European intellectuals in the 19th century would take to visit sites from classical antiquity. It takes in various scenarios: tourist sightseeing in the town, images of Roman remains, restoration work, items from the archaeological museum and a dramatic reconstruction of the period that features a parody of journeys to Rome, Pompeii and the Middle East taken by early modern luminaries such as Goethe, Stendhal and Flaubert.

For Ribalta, Petit Grand Tour 'seeks to show how the image of the town is produced and reproduced. He also seeks to bring into the light things that are not usually seen: the work of archaeologists, construction workers and extras dressed up as Romans to entertain tourists. His Roman ruins are a stage set populated by anonymous workers. They are invisible not because they are hidden but because they are the very opposite of an object or monument: they are movement, activity and life. They are also invisible in symbolic terms, because their work represents what is not seen in the official images and institutional promotion of a town.' This series on Tarragona and on the use of the historical city as cultural merchandise, exemplifying the role of monumental towns in transforming the urban economy, was decisive for Ribalta. It marked the start of his work in the field of culture, which he took further in later works such as Carnac (2008), Scrambling (2011), Empire (or K.D.) (2013- 2014) and, more recently. Restoration (2017- 2018). In Petit Gran Tour Ribalta was beginning to develop a method of photographic observation of the mechanisms for the reproduction of culture, the amalgam of history, economics, politics and culture that has underlain his output as an artist over the past ten years, with documentary photography as an instrument for analysing institutions.

Yolanda Romero Gómez