IF YOU'RE in the Comunidad Valenciana any time between now and the early hours of March 20, you may notice an awful lot of noise and colour on the streets. It's the season for the region's biggest festival,...
Barcelona hosts sell-out concert for refugees
12/02/2017
Iconic singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat, pop stars Antonio Orozco, Amaral and Pablo López, veteran rocker Manolo García and popular vocal group In Crescendo were among more than 50 artists who performed at a charity concert for refugees in Barcelona on Saturday night. All 15,000 tickets for the show at the Palau St. Jordi were sold to raise money and awareness for the plight of refugees.
Originally conceived to highlight Spain's slow response to the refugee crisis, the mega-concert is part of an ongoing campaign by non-profit organisation Casa Nostra Casa Vostra (Our House Your House) to draw attention to the current plight of refugees.
"The response has been huge and not only from artists," said Rubén Wagensberg, a secondary school teacher, music publicist and co-founder of Casa Nostra Casa Vostra.
The charity began as a grass-roots effort in Barcelona after Wagensberg and a colleague traveled to Greece, where they witnessed the forced evacuation of a refugee camp and the dire situation of the people there.
The concert, which the organisers are referring to as the 'Refugees Welcoming Night' is the campaign's biggest event so far, "a unique experience to defend the rights of refugees and migrants, those who have arrived and those who will soon come."
Wagensberg is taking issue with the Spanish government, which, in 2015, agreed to receive 17,000 refugees, the majority from camps in Greece and Italy, and 1,400 from camps outside of the EU. To date, the country has only allowed some 1,000 people into the country with refugee status. (Those numbers contrast with Spain’s non-refugee immigration, which rose over 20 percent in the first half of 2016. In addition, 90,783 foreign residents obtained Spanish nationality in the first six months of last year.)
"Not only are asylum laws restrictive in Spain," Wagensberg says. "Politicians lack the will to deal with this crisis."
Saturday’s concert will be followed by a massive demonstration in Barcelona on February 18th, for which Casa Nostra Casa Vostra and other organisations are bringing together protesters to march under the slogan "we want to take them in".
Apart from home-grown stars, there were performances from Syrian musician Feras Almalat and from Cheb Balowski, a Barcelona-based group whose multinational members sing in Arabic as well as Catalan and Spanish. Catalan folk singer Lluís Llach, a legend in Barcelona, even came of retirement to perform at the concert.
Joan Manuel Serrat, Barcelona's emblematic poet bard sang his classic "Mediterráneo" with an ensemble of other artists in in an emotional climax to the concert. Last month, Serrat, together with other artists, released a new "We Are the World" style video of "Mediterráneo", his 1971 love ballad to the Mediterranean and its people, which has taken on a tragic poignancy as thousands seeking to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe have perished on the journey.
"We have to sensitise people so that they will show the politicians that their inaction can cost them votes," says Wagensberg. "There's a big difference between me going to government offices to ask for action without having done anything," he added, "and showing up there after having filled the Palau Sant Jordi."
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Iconic singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat, pop stars Antonio Orozco, Amaral and Pablo López, veteran rocker Manolo García and popular vocal group In Crescendo were among more than 50 artists who performed at a charity concert for refugees in Barcelona on Saturday night. All 15,000 tickets for the show at the Palau St. Jordi were sold to raise money and awareness for the plight of refugees.
Originally conceived to highlight Spain's slow response to the refugee crisis, the mega-concert is part of an ongoing campaign by non-profit organisation Casa Nostra Casa Vostra (Our House Your House) to draw attention to the current plight of refugees.
"The response has been huge and not only from artists," said Rubén Wagensberg, a secondary school teacher, music publicist and co-founder of Casa Nostra Casa Vostra.
The charity began as a grass-roots effort in Barcelona after Wagensberg and a colleague traveled to Greece, where they witnessed the forced evacuation of a refugee camp and the dire situation of the people there.
The concert, which the organisers are referring to as the 'Refugees Welcoming Night' is the campaign's biggest event so far, "a unique experience to defend the rights of refugees and migrants, those who have arrived and those who will soon come."
Wagensberg is taking issue with the Spanish government, which, in 2015, agreed to receive 17,000 refugees, the majority from camps in Greece and Italy, and 1,400 from camps outside of the EU. To date, the country has only allowed some 1,000 people into the country with refugee status. (Those numbers contrast with Spain’s non-refugee immigration, which rose over 20 percent in the first half of 2016. In addition, 90,783 foreign residents obtained Spanish nationality in the first six months of last year.)
"Not only are asylum laws restrictive in Spain," Wagensberg says. "Politicians lack the will to deal with this crisis."
Saturday’s concert will be followed by a massive demonstration in Barcelona on February 18th, for which Casa Nostra Casa Vostra and other organisations are bringing together protesters to march under the slogan "we want to take them in".
Apart from home-grown stars, there were performances from Syrian musician Feras Almalat and from Cheb Balowski, a Barcelona-based group whose multinational members sing in Arabic as well as Catalan and Spanish. Catalan folk singer Lluís Llach, a legend in Barcelona, even came of retirement to perform at the concert.
Joan Manuel Serrat, Barcelona's emblematic poet bard sang his classic "Mediterráneo" with an ensemble of other artists in in an emotional climax to the concert. Last month, Serrat, together with other artists, released a new "We Are the World" style video of "Mediterráneo", his 1971 love ballad to the Mediterranean and its people, which has taken on a tragic poignancy as thousands seeking to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe have perished on the journey.
"We have to sensitise people so that they will show the politicians that their inaction can cost them votes," says Wagensberg. "There's a big difference between me going to government offices to ask for action without having done anything," he added, "and showing up there after having filled the Palau Sant Jordi."
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