"Exactly one month ago, last October 13, the students of Master's Degree in programs of study of Curatorship were invited to a tour of different artistic and cultural spaces in Santander, Cantabria. 

We left at 7:00 a.m. from Yamaguchi Park, it was our first outing and there was a lot of expectation among us because, from the group of sixteen, only one of us knew the destination city. 

Santander welcomed us with a breathtaking view of its bay that opened up to a boardwalk full of people running, walking their dogs and strolling in the midst of a mild and pleasant climate. The bus quickly approached our first stop: Las Naves de Gamazo.

We were welcomed by Eva Rodríguez Soto, coordinator of the space, and she told us a little about the history of this art center. Las Naves de Gamazo recovers two old industrial sites located in front of the bay of Santander and was born out of a desire for social inclusion; it is an institution of character educational that seeks to accompany the understanding of contemporary artistic expression and bring the citizens of Santander closer to artists and their works. 

The collection of the space belongs to the ENAIRE Foundation and the Ministry of Urban Transport, mobility and diary and, together with the Government of Cantabria, finance its operation, where temporary exhibitions are presented. On that day we visited, together with the educational coordinator North Collection, Homo Habitanta exhibition that seeks to examine how human beings are aware of their environment, how they inhabit themselves and how they inhabit the world, through a selection of 42 works by 21 national and 16 international artists.

The second stop was nearby: the Botín Center. Located on the city's waterfront, this building by architect Renzo Piano, at partnership with Luis Vidal and architects, seeks to integrate the city center with the bay. The structure is suspended on pillars and columns that serve as a pier, a strategy that allows passersby a view of the bay, letting in light and integrating with the space. The imposing architecture was a surprise for us. We entered and went up to the second floor to meet Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz, director of exhibitions and the Center's collection. She, who knew we were eager to explore more of the building, took us outside to tell us about the mission statement of the space.

The Botín Center has an artistic program that consists of three axes: the training through grants and international workshops led by internationally renowned artists, the research of drawing by Spanish artists and the knowledge dissemination through exhibitions, fruits of its programs of research and training. Barbara told us about each of the grants, about the training program, about the collection and then took us to the rooms of the Center to visit two exhibitions: Entanglements: Eva Fàbregas y El Greco / Tino Sehgal. 

The first is the result of a project whose goal is to support artists who have benefited from a scholarship of Art of the Botín Foundation. Eva Fàbregas was a beneficiary of it and in this exhibition she was invited to present her work and to select works by other artists who, like her, were winners in the past. The exhibition puts in tension the pieces that take over the architectural space and confronts the viewer with works that speak about desire, the body, affections, the unpleasant and the disturbing. The second exhibition presents a conversation between the work Adoration of the Shepherds by El Greco and the creation of a work from meeting with this one by the artist Tino Sehgal titled Thisyouiiyou, a performance that never ends, that can be seen for hours and hours and in which different people participate, including the public that wants to interact with it. Since we saw it, the students of Master's Degree have found ourselves several times mentioning this work as an example in classes and in conversations. Questioning it, commenting on it, trying to recreate it.

After lunch at the market we visited the Siboney gallery, where Juan González Riancho, its owner director , told us about the difficulties of sustaining an independent art space, the importance of art fairs and the relationship between the curator and the artist. 

We closed the hectic day with a visit to FLUENT, a self-managed and independent space that remains standing surrounded by abandoned warehouses. It is composed of a bookshop, full of specialized titles and an exhibition space that transforms depending on what the work requires. Here we talk to Cristina Somavilla, a former student at Master's Degree, about her experiences in the world of curating, film and publishing, and about this contemporary art space where they present exhibition cycles, texts and public programs. 

The visit to these four art spaces, each one so different from the other, of different sizes, with different missions and target audiences presented us with a very interesting panorama of the cultural diary that has been growing in Santander. Our hosts repeatedly raised their concerns about the lack of local audiences and the need to promote the arts and develop audiences for contemporary art in the city so that all the effort that has been made to create a cultural scene does not remain only in the hands of tourism. 

With these reflections in mind, and after walking about 15 kilometers, we returned to Pamplona".

Text written by: Sara Abisambra Borrero, student of Master's Degree programs of study of the Commissariat