The writer Najat El Hachmi gave the opening speech for La Mercè in the Saló de Cent, getting the city’s annual festival under way.
“Barcelona will be the city of freedom if it protects, promotes, disseminates and guarantees the rights of women and children. And if there are spaces for meetings to debate and exchange ideas and a strong network of ties that allow us to protect ourselves if necessary”.
The writer Najat El Hachmi gave the speech centring on the defence of women’s rights and freedoms, and on the diversity and plurality that characterise Barcelona. During this activity which signals the start of the festivities for La Mercè, El Hachmi called on the people of Barcelona to celebrate everything that can be celebrated.
“I learnt that even in the most terrible situations we have to celebrate, to share the wonder of being alive with others, transmitting between us what Erich Fromm said made good mothers that not only help to sustain life, but also convey the need to be joyous, to celebrate the fact we are alive”.
During her talk, the writer particularly remembered the suffering of the Ukrainian people, with Kyiv as the guest city for this year’s festivities, as well as migrants who risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean and the victims of the earthquake in Morocco. El Hachmi also stressed the need to change perspective and empathise with people’s suffering and with the victims of forgotten conflicts.
“All too often our solidarity and empathy with victims discriminates through such a chance element, so random as today’s youngsters would say, as having more or less melanin. This bias can be corrected if we change perspective and get closer to people, one by one, with their names and surnames, their own personal stories”.
The author of works such as Jo també sóc catalana and Dilluns ens estimaran explained the importance of Barcelona throughout her life as a symbol of freedom. El Hachmi was born in Beni Sibel, a town in the Moroccan province of Nador. At the age of eight she moved to Vic to live with her family. From Vic she moved to Granollers and for the last thirteen years has been living in the Eixample neighbourhood in Barcelona.
“There are a lot of us Moroccan women from the suburbs, from the edge of the outskirts, the edge of the counties, from neighbourhoods which seem entirely away from things, where the values of democracy and equality get through very narrow cracks, there are many of us who in Barcelona have a sort of golden city of independence, of individual emancipation and freedom”.
Before moving to Barcelona, El Hachmi had already strolled the city’s streets and discovered it thanks to Josep Pla’s Quadren Gris, Mercè Rodoreda’s Colometa and Carmen Laforet’s Andrea.
“The excitement of what I’ve experienced in Barcelona and the emotion of what I’ve read about Barcelona have exactly the same intensity and make the city much more than what you see in a simple glance”.
As a woman who grew up in a Muslim family, El Hachmi calls out to women to break away from established patriarchal order and freely decide their own future and have the right to their own bodies.
“I got to university thanks to my grandad Benisa, who believed we could only progress if we got a good education, but for my father, letting a woman catch the train alone and come to a place where she could do whatever she wanted was more than he could bear. Women’s freedom is so frightening that sometimes they prohibit us from things which don’t appear to be important, things that in themselves don’t mean defying the established order”.
Finally, the writer noted there is still a long way to go to tackle the identity fundamentalism that corners and discriminates women, questioning the obligation of wearing head coverings.
“Catalan Moroccan women have been educated with the idea that if a single hair sticks out of the material covering our heads, everything will go pear-shaped, and the most terrible storms will be unleashed. But look at these girls with their hair in the wind, who can’t stop looking at their own reflections in every shop window, they feel an unprecedented joy, unimaginable for the anonymous people around them: the joy of the freedom of things that seem unimportant, that’s true freedom”.
The opening speech for La Mercè, which signals the start of the festivities, was presided over by the Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, who after the speech made way for the traditional Toc d’Inici, the opening ceremony with its dances by the city’s giants, bighead figures and popular beat figures.
Full information on La Mercè 2023 at barcelona.cat/lamerce.