Màriam Ben-Arab, the Catalan with Tunisian roots who draws in 'Cavall Fort'

BarcelonaIt's immediately clear that Ridha Ben-Arab (Tunisia, 1948) is a charismatic man. He was already charismatic when he arrived at the Escola Massana on a scholarship from his country in 1972, at the age of 23, to specialize in ceramics alongside two other fine arts students. "Books could be written to explain how I was welcomed here, with what kindness," says the artist, painter, and ceramist. In his first class, he discovered Catalan existed. "I was a foreigner, but I didn't have to speak Spanish, nor did I know how; I spoke Arabic, French, and English," he recalls. So, right from the start, he took up Catalan. At school, everyone spoke the language, and he joined a group from here, including Fina Canela, his future wife, a ceramist and teacher.

Ben-Arab saw the death of Puig Antich, the No-Do, the fall of the dictatorship, and the Transition. "I didn't arrive when everything was already done," she recalls, "for me it was important." But if there was a decisive factor in her taking the step, it was her in-laws: "Fina's family is from the Segarra region, from the heart of Catalonia. Her parents even struggled to speak Spanish, and I was thrilled with life, in Catalan from the first day," she says. "I didn't even consider it. We live here, we speak Catalan. To understand a people, you have to speak their language," she asserts.

Proud of her Arabic name

When their daughter, Màriam (La Roca del Vallès, 1983), was born, there was no debate either: being a mixed-race couple who spoke Catalan at home, she would speak Catalan to him and he would speak Tunisian (the Arabic of Tunisia). The girl grew up speaking Catalan here and spent summers on the other side of the Mediterranean, with cousins and uncles, the way to consolidate the heritage language her father taught her. Fina also learned it by listening to him. "It's a gift you get from speaking another language, because you learn it effortlessly. I think in Catalan, but I can also speak Tunisian, although I can't write it. If I didn't have it, my father's family would have closed their doors to me," explains the daughter. Now that she travels less, she's losing it and has to ask her father to keep speaking to her, because inertia drives them toward Catalan. "We've always spoken in Catalan about important things," she says.

Màriam inherited the family talent, studied fine arts and today, with that exotic name that undoubtedly has Arabic origins and "generates curiosity", she admits, she is a cartoonist of a symbol of Catalan such as Strong Horse. A demonstration of the broad and diverse Catalan identity. Among other editorial commissions, he has just published the magnificent Ivy (Bindi Books), one of the best children's comics of the year, which compiles the comics published in the magazine over the last three years.

The Ben-Arabs say they haven't noticed any racism in their white skin, but they do hear xenophobic comments. The marriage was a shock in the town of La Fina—the bulk of Muslim immigration would begin to arrive two decades later—and, when they landed in Roca del Vallès, Ridha was called "the Moor." He quickly dismissed it: "Individual attitude counts for a lot, and if you speak Catalan you integrate more, people like it," he says. If he had arrived today, would things have been different? Would he have been forced to speak Catalan in Barcelona? No one knows. What he does know is that today, when they see his name, there are still those who address him directly in Spanish: "That bothers me," he complains. Ridha has spoken, lived, and loved in Catalan for more than fifty years.