With the far right, the fake news And with hate speech spreading across Europe, the humanitarian rescue NGO Open Arms is hosting an exhibition at the Palau Robert in Barcelona. For ten years, they have saved 73,000 lives adrift at sea, putting their resources at the service of European institutions that have abdicated their legal and moral obligation to do everything possible to prevent anyone, regardless of their origin, from drowning. And not only do they let people die through negligence, but they have also dedicated themselves to persecuting and criminalizing the organizations that carry out this work. They persecute them with a message as false as it is absurd: that people risk their lives in a small boat simply because they "know" that someone on the other side is ready to rescue them. It doesn't matter that data, journalists, experts, and witnesses confirm that, in reality, the pull factor doesn't exist, that what drives people to move around the world is the hope of reaching a place where they will live better. And the idea that risking their lives for that is worthwhile.

Open Arms celebrated its tenth anniversary of rescue missions this Monday night, during which it has saved more than 76,000 people. The NGO organized a charity gala at Barcelona's Lonja de Mar, bringing together volunteers and representatives of civil society, as well as well-known figures such as American actor Richard Gere, who has been collaborating with the Badalona-based organization for years. "They thank me for coming to support this cause, but we should thank them and the people for their solidarity," said the actor, who also called for an end to the war in Gaza: "Netanyahu must go," he said. He also asked for applause for the people sailing on the flotilla to the Strip.

Ten years ago, when the world was shocked by the photograph of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian boy who drowned on a Turkish beach as his parents tried to take him to Europe, two lifeguards from Badalona decided to go to the Greek island of Lesbos to do what they knew best: save lives in the water. It was the first step in what would later become one of the NGOs rescuing people in a Mediterranean that had become a mass grave due to the closure of safe routes for migrants with fewer resources. "A few years ago, they gave us prizes. Now they criminalize us," Oscar Camps, founder of Open Arms, recalled this Tuesday in the port of Barcelona. A good summary of the change of winds blowing in Europe. Since 2015, they have rescued 72,000 shipwrecked people in the Mediterranean. Now they are launching a new mission in a new setting: the Canary Islands.

The ship Astral Open Arms carried out one of its most difficult rescues this Sunday night. In the middle of the night, it located 54 people who had been trapped for three days on an abandoned oil platform in the middle of the Mediterranean, near Tunisia's maritime zone of influence. Among them was a woman who had given birth right there on the platform that Friday.

Open Arms has rescued 54 people who had been trapped for three days on an abandoned oil platform in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Borriana shipyards give off a strong smell of paint. An army of mechanics, welders, painters and other technicians are working to get the ship ready. The ship, taller than all the buildings in the area, stands out imposingly from the rest. The original blue colour of the hull is now covered with white and red and the Open Arms logo. But there is still a lot of work to be done.

Ocean Viking, the rescue ship of the French NGO SOS Mediterranée, began to disembark 572 people, including 183 minors, survivors of the daily drama in the Mediterranean, now far from the media spotlight, at midday in Sicily. They were rescued in six boats in the waters separating Libya from Malta, most of them in the rescue zone under the responsibility of the European island, and after a week at sea they will be able to disembark in Italy. The largest was a fishing boat carrying 369 people. Last Saturday another dinghy boat sank off Tunisia, leaving at least 43 dead and 83 survivors. On Spain's southern border, more than 2,000 people have died this semester, as announced this week by the NGO Caminando Fronteras. They are only the first steps of a summer that will again fill the waters of the Mediterranean, the most unequal border on the planet, with deaths.

The crews of the Tunisian-flagged fishing boats watched the spectacle with curiosity and fascination. A speedboat with three people on board approached the barge and began handing out safety vests and face masks before radioing to the Open Arms, which immediately set a course for the location to facilitate the rescue. After reassuring the passengers, who were shouting to make themselves heard among the waves, they waited for the NGO boat to approach to proceed to embark them, carefully and one by one, first in the boats and then on the deck of the ship, where a dozen sailors and volunteers equipped with PPE identified them, assigned them a number and gave them water, food and a blanket. And so, three times in three days, three operations that saved 219 people from probable shipwreck, overshadowed by dozens of warnings of boats in distress that were not so lucky because they were never found or because the Libyan coastguard moved forward to return their crew members to their point of departure.