What do you think if we do a little memory? Although surely many Barcelonians do not know it, Barcelona has a Permanent AIDS Memorial. It was inaugurated in April 2003, coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the NGO and promoter of the AIDS Memorial in Barcelona Projecte dels NOMS. The monument, designed by the architect Patrizia Falcone with the participation of the gardener Lluís Abad, is located in a discreet and beautiful place in the city, the Barcelona Acclimatization Garden in Montjuïc Park. It consists of a simple flowerbed of elongated stone slabs, in the center of which stands an olive tree and, inside, a poem by Miquel Martí i Pol is written.
Once a year, family and friends of people who have died from AIDS, increasingly older, as well as a representation of civil society, parties and institutions, gather to remember them together and, at the same time, strengthen civil society's commitment to the fight against the pandemic. This Saturday, May 21, they will once again go up to Montjuïc and will once again lay flowers at the Permanent AIDS Memorial while reading aloud the name of that friend, lover, partner, brother, son, father or mother who died of AIDS. As a homosexual and, therefore, a member of one of the communities most affected by AIDS, I have always felt especially called to collaborate with community initiatives aimed at fighting a pandemic that, in little more than three decades, has caused the death of nearly 39 million people worldwide and suffering to many millions more. Because HIV/AIDS has not only compromised and compromises the health of many people, but to a greater or lesser extent has conditioned our sexualityto practically everyone.If you want to get an idea of what the first years of AIDS meant, especially for the homosexual community, I invite you to read some of the stories that family and friends of people who died from this disease twenty or thirty years ago in the United States share through The AIDS Memorial (@theaidsmemorial) Instagram account. It provokes an infinite mix of sadness and rage in me to contemplate the photographs and read the testimonies of so many lives prematurely cut short by the pandemic. So many smiling boys full of energy and eager to conquer the world who in many cases had left behind towns and families to be free and happy in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles or New York and who ended up dying very young and, in some cases, terribly alone. A tragedy.
More memory: In 2016, coinciding with World AIDS Day, the Museu d'Història de Catalunya received the AIDS Memorial Quilt, a composition made with individual fabrics containing the names of people who died as a result of the disease, made by family and friends. A way to ensure that the human losses caused by AIDS and the fight to confront it will have a prominent place in the history of our country.
In this story, the Dr. Bonaventura Clotet, doctor and researcher committed to fighting the pandemic from the very beginning and an tireless seeker of a vaccine for AIDS. In this regard, the creation, in 1995, ofIrsicaixa, an internationally recognized HIV/AIDS research institute captained by Dr. Clotet, the result of a collaboration between La Caixa and the Departament de Salut of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Without a doubt, a success story of public-private collaboration. Since playing in the world's top research league is extremely expensive, Dr. Clotet has simultaneously been inventing events to raise funds. The most successful of all is the People in Red gala which, this year, will take place on June 2.More than forty years have passed since the first cases of AIDS were detected in our country. It would be almost poetic justice if the people who had to suffer the darkest years of AIDS could also see its end. We are indeed very close because antiretroviral treatment makes the virus undetectable and, therefore, untransmittable. PrEP, or the preventive HIV pill, is also helping a lot to end AIDS. Nevertheless, in Catalonia, about 600 people are infected with HIV each year. Hopefully, AIDS will soon be just a museum piece.