Ignacio Morales Trujillo (1930-2023) inhabits a micro-world (Betijuelo, Tarifa) within the geographical space of the Strait of Gibraltar. A witness to the great transformations that have taken place in this location, he embodies the survival of a way of life in harmony with the environment where he was born and has spent his entire existence. He lives austerely, without altering his customs, which are deeply rooted in nature’s cycles, in a stone-and-thatch dwelling over 200 years old. He maintains it as it was in the times of his ancestors, with minimal adaptations to some of the services and technologies that began to be introduced in the area from the 1960s onwards.

Since childhood, he has been familiar with the care of animals, agricultural tasks, and the work of planting pines and other trees that now accompany him on his walks. An example of natural environment preservation, thanks to his understanding that nature is what builds his habitat, he coexists in balance with the forest, the orchard, the pond, the fire pit, domestic animals, and modern yet worn-out everyday objects, creatively repurposed thanks to his ingenuity.

A way of life that values degrowth and recycling as an attitude against resource extractivism and the false notion that they are infinite, as well as environmental degradation and the wastefulness of consumer societies.