On Sunday, the International Mediterranean Day was celebrated for the first time, and the Barcelona City Council illuminated its facade with an olive branch to commemorate a day that aims to promote Mediterranean identity and strengthen ties between the two shores of the Mare Nostrum. The International Mediterranean Day stems from a declaration approved a year ago by the forty-two member states of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), coinciding with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Barcelona Process. I don't know about you, but it seems to me that this first International Mediterranean Day has gone largely unnoticed by the public, and that's a shame.
I say it's a shame because the UfM's objectives are more necessary than ever, and also because Barcelona has a deeply Mediterranean soul. We have invested a lot of effort in being modern and European —believing, mistakenly, that to be modern and European we had to become Nordic or, at least, Germanic— and, along the way, I get the impression that we have renounced a good part of our Mediterranean identity or replaced it with a beer commercial version of Mediterranean-ness.
I am one of the many Barcelonans who has the feeling that this Barcelona, propelled towards international success by the '92 Olympic Games, has been losing a bit of what makes it unique in the world. That is, its soul. Well, to recover part of its essence, it may not be necessary to commission costly audits but, simply, to look less towards the other side of the Atlantic and more towards Italy, Greece, Turkey and, of course, towards the southern shore of the Mediterranean.
It is along these lines that, yesterday, the Maritime Museum of Barcelona hosted the awards ceremony for A Sea of Words, a Euro-Mediterranean literary competition annually organized by the IEMed (European Institute of the Mediterranean) and the Anna Lindh Foundation. Hala Kabalan, a young Syrian activist residing in Beirut, won first prize with her storyOut of tunethat explores feelings of rejection and empathy towards refugees.We have invested a lot of effort in being modern and European and, along the way, I get the impression that we have renounced a good part of our Mediterranean identity
This weekend, I was thinking about all this, after buying tickets for the concert that Lluís Llach will give at Palau Sant Jordi next December 18, because I precisely became a fan of the singer-songwriter from Verges in 1993 as a result of Un pont de mar blava, a song to respect and understanding between Mediterranean cultures.
I listen again, after many years, to the voices of Llach, Amina Alaoui —in Arabic— and Nena Venetsanou —in Greek—, and I have just convinced myself that it would be fantastic if Barcelona knew how to take advantage of this new International Mediterranean Day to recover and reclaim its Mediterranean identity: "Un pont de mar blava per sentir-nos frec a frec, un pont que agermani pells i vides diferents, diferents".