I lived all my life close to the sea. Because of this, many of the themes that I paint are related to the sea. Goose barnacles (percebes as they are called in Galicia and all Spain) are one among those subjects. It could be one subject among many others, but it is special. Firstly, as a man from the coast, I like all seafood but I specially like the goose barnacles. In this land (Galicia), many people considers the goose barnacle the tastiest seafood and I agree with them. Unfortunately, they are really expensive because people must risk their lives to gather them. Every year the sea captures one or two barnacle-gatherers who cannot escape the waves. Here is the second reason to consider this animal so special. The goose barnacle lives where the waves hit the rocks with the greatest violence. In sheltered places it does not grow or it grows weak and deformed. The sea, easily sweeping a man away, the rocks cannot pull it up.

However, there is something that the goose barnacle cannot withstand: pollution. It usually grows in areas that receive clean waters from the open sea. When the oil tanker Prestige wrecked in front of our coasts (the last of a series of four catastrophic shipwrecks in the last forty years), and the asphalt-like oil covered the rocks, the goose barnacles died (as well as the other life forms that grew in the same places). As the time passed our coast recovered from the disaster and the goose barnacles returned. They are like a signal, a symptom of recovered health sent to us by the sea.

The goose barnacle symbolizes at the same time the strength of the sea and its fragility against man's outrages. This is the reason why I paint goose barnacles, because they are so special.

Carlos Botana , Galicia (Spain)

P.S. The text (in Galician) of the black and white picture says: Colour it and then eat it (the appropriate Pantone colours are indicated in the draw in order to achieve an appetizing appearance).