After nearly 30 years as a photojournalist in Spain collaborating for The Associated Press, Álvaro Barrientos has covered his last running of the bulls in Pamplona before retiring later this month. The Medellín, Colombia native has called this northeastern Spanish city home for decades.

“I was always asked, ‘Where do you live?’… Pamplona. More than once, people didn’t even know where to locate it. … ‘And what’s your job?’ And I would say, ETA. That’s my job. Everything that happens around all the violence that the tragedy of ETA generated in Basque society and in Navarra,” Barrientos said in an interview in early July.

From the late 1990s until the early 2010s, Barrientos’ daily task was covering the heartbreaking toll of the Basque separatist group ETA, which left hundreds dead over more than four decades. Since peace was negotiated, the soft-spoken Barrientos, often sporting his trademark scarf, has shifted his focus to documenting unique traditions and ways of life that are fast disappearing.

Riot police detain an unidentified pro-independence Basque demonstrator in San Sebastian, northern Spain, Sept. 14, 2008. (AP Photo /Alvaro Barrientos)

Arnaldo Otegui, right, leader of the banned Basque Batasuna party confronts with a masked Basque riot police officer during a banned march in Alsasua, northern Spain, April 3, 2006. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

He still remembers riding in his father’s car as a teen in the early 1970s in his native Colombia when the radio delivered a news bulletin about war breaking out in the Middle East. Bringing to the world unforgettable snapshots of history is what Barrientos has dedicated his professional life to.

He did get to cover conflicts in Lebanon and Israel. But the most indelible contributions of his nearly 30-year career as a contributor for The Associated Press in northeastern Spain -- from which he is just retiring at 67 -- have come from photographing both breaking news and timeless traditions in his adopted home region.

Whether it’s the intense face-off between a masked law enforcement officer and a protester, or a shepherd guiding his flock to greener pastures in the Pyrenees Mountains, Barrientos always got close enough – literally and metaphorically – to transcend the instant and photograph the essence that’s iconic and immemorial.

“Personally, I have not wanted to feel removed from what’s happening. That is, I also haven’t let an event swallow me up like a wave that I can’t get out of. But I’ve tried to let myself be shaken by what’s happening.”

— Alvaro Barrientos

That empathy has come at great personal cost.

During the violent days of ETA, when death threats against journalists were constant, Barrientos was always awake and listening to the news by 5 a.m., with his cameras and extra batteries at the ready, the car filled with gas and some food if he didn’t make it home by the end of the day.

Whether it was witnessing a police investigation around a bombed-out car or the heartbreak of relatives at a funeral, he always tried to get there early and maintain his position – “because many times I had to stay hidden to be able to take photos, literally hidden, so that I wouldn’t be spotted by either the police or the other side.”

Pro-independence Basque masked demonstrators throw stones and bottles against Basque riot police in San Sebastian, northern Spain, Sept. 14, 2008. (AP Photo /Alvaro Barrientos)

Alleged member of the Basque armed group ETA, Urtza Alkorta, center, is surrounded by supporters to avoid been detained by police, in Ondarroa, northern Spain, May 15, 2013. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

Ibon Iparragirre, left, an alleged commander of the Basque armed group ETA, reacts as he is taken away by several masked Basque police officers near to the Basque town of Ondarroa northern Spain, Jan. 29, 2010. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

A Palestinian boy points a toy gun at a memorial for the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the Al Azzeh Refugee Camp in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Dec. 31, 2006. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

Dramatic changes in technology from analog to digital have increased a hundred-fold the number of images Barrientos takes and transmits nearly instantaneously. He recalls bringing 4 or 5 rolls of film to a soccer match, knowing it would take him half an hour to transmit a single photo, while today he might easily shoot 1,000.

But the point is still to get the one classic image – as he did of Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo celebrating after scoring a goal at a Madrid match.

“I’m there with a long lens, a 400, to take a closeup of him, and I see that no no no, it’s not going to fit. So I change lenses quickly, and that’s when he makes that gesture. So there you go, I have my laptop, I take out the camera card, I see the photo and I’m about to send it, and suddenly I see myself surrounded by photographers behind me all asking, ‘Did you get it?’”

That instinct for the special moment is behind the most soulful of his photographs, both exceptional and daily life moments when the people look straight back at the viewer, establishing the connection that Barrientos had built up even in the most unlikely circumstances.

Revelers of ''Pena Voladora'', holds up a colleague at the end of the first running of the bulls at the San Fermin fiestas, in Pamplona northern Spain, July 7, 2012. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

Revelers enjoy water thrown from a balcony during the San Fermin fiestas in Pamplona, northern Spain, July 6, 2007. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

Real Madrid's Ronaldo from Portugal celebrates after scoring during a Spanish La Liga soccer match against Almeria at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid, Spain, Dec. 5, 2009. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

People look at a ''Cabezudo'', one member of San Fermin Comparsa Group, during the San Fermin festival, in Pamplona, Spain, July 7, 2014. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

A cow jumps over revelers lying down on the bull ring at the end of the fifth running of the bulls during the San Fermin festival, in Pamplona northern Spain, July 11, 2013. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

During the mid-2000s Lebanon War, Barrientos saw a group of elderly men whiling away an afternoon chatting on a bench in front of a wall pockmarked with large machine-gun holes.

“I introduced myself, and I told them I’m a reporter for a news agency, and I would like to spend a little time with you, if that is OK. And they accepted me,” Barrientos said.

Later, Adham, his fixer – Barrientos calls him his “guardian angel” – told him something that became Barrientos’ philosophy on every assignment.

“He said, ‘Look, it’s the first time that I see a photographer who stops to speak with people instead of asking, “Where are the dead?”’ Just like that,” Barrientos recalled. “That comment made me think that yes, you have to stop to speak with people, not just ask where are the dead, but what has happened, can I accompany you, or in some way get in with them.”

Over the last few years, Barrientos’ humanist approach has led him to capture disappearing worlds, from popular devotions in small, emptying towns to jobs that only a few still perform, like seasonal transhumance shepherding in the mountains between France and Spain or the hand-harvesting of rare clams on Spain’s western Atlantic coast.

“We are like historians with our cameras, we leave behind a deposit of images that are history. And that will help people around us, and the future generations, as information, as teachings, as a reference point to see something that maybe in a few years will be impossible to see. And all that will be left will be these images.”

— Alvaro Barrientos