The Palestinian journalist Mariam Barghouti, international resident of the CCCB

BarcelonaPalestinian journalist and researcher Mariam Barghouti, an international reference in journalism in occupied West Bank, will spend the coming months in Barcelona as part of the resident program at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània (CCCB).

Barghouti explains the daily reality in the West Bank for media outlets such as The Guardian, Newsweek, the BBC, The New Arab, and Middle East Eye, and was a correspondent for Mondweiss in Palestine. She also collaborates with governmental and non-governmental organizations, documenting the situation on the ground. She is one of the initiators of the Communicating Palestine platform to decolonize the media narrative.

"In the West Bank, we live a reality of ethnic cleansing, where Palestinians are expelled from their land, not only by soldiers but by armed settler militias, who every day burn houses with entire families inside," Bargouthi recalled this midday in Barcelona at the presentation event for the residency at the CCCB. And she denounced that "Israel does not act alone, but is sustained by a global system of oppression, with invisible complicity."

The journalist admits that documenting for years the oppression from which she herself cannot escape ends up affecting her ability to recognize it, and believes that spending a few months in Barcelona will help her to "reflect and process" everything she has had to witness. She also warns that journalism cannot be limited to "flooding people with the horrors of war, without pause," and that a deeper approach is needed. Likewise, she highlighted that the blockade of international press in Gaza and the assassination of more than 270 Palestinian journalists by the Israeli army "has made people realize that there are things to hide" and has highlighted "a change in public opinion that will further isolate Israel."

Judit Carrera, the director of the CCCB, explained that the international residency program facilitates "long stays to generate a bond with Barcelona and its intellectual, educational, cultural, and artistic ecosystem" and that the center wants to "jointly contribute with journalism to the improvement of public debate and criticism of abuses of power." Barghouti's residency is part of the annual celebration of George Orwell's legacy at the CCCB, with a reflection by the journalist on language as a weapon. The Palestinian journalist is the seventh participant in the program, following the writer and journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, the journalist and climate activist Eliane Brum, and the writer and poet Maria Stepànova.

In addition to giving a lecture on Monday at CCBB, Barghouti will participate in meetings with Catalan journalists and will have two conversations with Sudanese journalist Zeinab Salih and Palestinian-American Laila Al-Arian. He will also have a dialogue with Israeli historian Ilan Pappé at Fira Literal.