“The olive trees that your Pilar paints are real, / They are pagan, Christian, and modern olive trees / that guard the secret desires of the dead / with gestures, wills, and poses of the living”. This is what the poet Rubén Darío wrote addressing Joan Sureda, the husband of the painter Pilar Montaner. We remember the life and work of this exceptional artist, ahead of her time, as we commemorate the 150th anniversary of her birth, on April 13, 1876.

A facile joke, referring to that photograph by Isaac Buj, would suggest that there are people who, faced with the adversities of our time, climb walls. But the truth is that what has become known as "vertical work" brings back memories of earlier eras of capitalism that we had wanted to believe were behind us. The eras of the greatest lack of protection for workers, the eras of literally risking one's life for a wage. The images in movies, with workers cleaning skyscraper windows hanging from a harness, while the good guy in the film shoots himself with the gangs of the bad guys. The great millionaires from before the stock market crash of '29, owners and masters of the large production lines that were then recently invented.