The Orphanage · Echoes · The Rooms They Left Behind

One of the most unforgettable places I have photographed in Spain wasn't a famous monument or a celebrated landscape. It was an abandoned orphanage in Teruel, officially known as the Casa Provincial de Beneficencia, which for nearly two centuries provided residential care, education, and vocational training for vulnerable children.

Walking through its corridors felt less like exploring an abandoned building and more like stepping into a life that had simply paused. Dust covered every surface, yet almost nothing had been disturbed. Shoe-making workshops still held hundreds of wooden lasts neatly arranged on shelves. Machines, tools, classrooms, dormitories, and everyday objects remained exactly where someone had left them, as though the children might return after lunch to continue their day.

Each room revealed another small piece of ordinary life.

Sunlight filtered through long corridors. Chalkboards still carried faint traces of lessons. Bathrooms stood ready for children who would never return. Calendars remained fixed on dates that had long since passed. The building had become a time capsule, preserving not great historical events, but the quiet routines of childhood.

Then, in a small basement room, I found several tiny children's coffins stacked carefully against the wall. I lowered my camera.

Whether they had ever been used, I don't know, and perhaps I never will. But seeing them there, covered in decades of dust, was one of the most moving moments of my years photographing Spain. In that instant, the building became something more than an abandoned orphanage. It became a place that held lives I would never know, stories I could never fully tell, and questions that would probably never be answered.

As I walked back through the silent corridors, I realized that not every photograph is meant to explain the past. Sometimes it is enough simply to remember that these children were here.