"I'm twenty years old, but they won't let me leave the house alone unless I'm with my brother, who's nine."

Dossier Violations of the rights of immigrant girls 3 articles

• "I'm twenty years old, but they won't let me leave the house alone unless I'm with my brother, who's nine."
• "There are cultural practices that should not be tolerated."
• "The forced marriages that are detected are just the tip of the iceberg."

BarcelonaNone of them are willing to have their real names appear in this report, and most prefer to conduct the interview by telephone. Some are minors, teenagers: their voices and their way of expressing themselves give them away. However, their age doesn't matter because they all tell similar stories. Soraya is 20 years old, of Moroccan origin, and claims that her parents don't let her leave the house alone. She always has to be accompanied by her nine-year-old brother or fifteen-year-old sister. Sukleen, 16, born in India but raised here, laments that her parents don't let her socialize with boys. And Laila, also 16 but originally from Bangladesh, was beaten by her father simply for wanting to study music.

On January 28, a group of educators from the Raval neighborhood of Barcelona released a statement. through the Betevé television channel In this article, they denounced that girls of immigrant origin are prohibited from playing sports, music, dancing, going to summer camp, or even something as harmless as going for a walk with their friends. They can only go from home to school and from school to home. All of them are young women who grew up here, have a Western mentality, speak Catalan, but their parents are immigrants. Barcelona City Council claimed to be unaware of the problem.

ARA has investigated for weeks: it has spoken with educators, teachers, and young people, and has confirmed that what the professionals were reporting is true. These are not isolated cases, but a larger problem; it has been going on for some time, and the City Council was fully informed. What's more, it extends beyond the Raval neighborhood and, in some cases, can be the precursor to a forced marriage.

It is striking that all the professionals this newspaper has spoken to have requested anonymity. They fear losing their jobs or the trust of immigrant families, and they lament that the administrations wash their hands of the problem by claiming that it's too big a problem that, if opened, could fuel xenophobia. Should we really look the other way?

The alarm bells ring

On November 30, 2023, a school raised the alarm with the municipal school council of the Ciutat Vella district. The school leader expressed concern about this problem, according to the minutes of the meeting. Also on that date, several prominent organizations that are part of the Raval Youth Roundtable, a coordinating body for neighborhood organizations in which municipal technicians participate, agreed to establish a committee dedicated to this issue and compile the cases they detected in a joint document.

ARA has had access to the document: "15-year-old girl says her father hits her with a cane because she associates with boys from the summer camp", "14-year-old girl assumes her family will choose a husband for her after 18", "12-year-old girl stops going. These are examples of some of the dozens of incidents recorded in just a few months.

In the spring of 2024, also in the Taula Jove (Young Adult Week), municipal technicians urged neighborhood organizations to count the number of girls and boys participating in summer camps and summer camps to verify whether there really was a substantial gender difference. But only three organizations did so.

On November 15, neighborhood educators met with City Hall technicians to insist on the problem and request that the administration intervene immediately. The response they received was that if the educators detected In some cases, they will be referred to social services. "This puts the girls at risk and will cause families who still take their daughters to extracurricular activities to stop doing so," lament the educators, who believe this is not the solution, not by a long shot.

That's why, in January, they made the complaint public and formed a group they've named For ThemBecause, they say, they do it for these girls and their rights. Their goal is to formally establish themselves as an association to continue detecting new cases, become a leader in the Barcelona area, and pressure the authorities to take action.

"These situations have gone in crescendo. As an educator, I don't know what to do anymore, but what I am clear about is that we can't sweep the problem under the rug," says one of the professionals from this group. According to her, the restrictions begin as soon as the girls start menstruating: "Families only allow them to do extra school support or at most go to the library. Some families also accept that they pursue higher education, but only because it will give them status to find a better husband." And she insists: "Let's be a loudspeaker for what the girls tell us, it's not our white gaze. And this doesn't only happen in Raval: it also happens in Vic, Gelida, Ciutat Meridiana..."

The head of an educational center laments "the goodism "We have to do a lot of work to get these girls to go to summer camps. Society has become polarized, and so have these families." This is also confirmed by an educator who is not part of the Por Ellas collective, but is part of an important organization in Raval: "They are girls who are broken inside.

Laila is 16 years old, born in Bangladesh but has lived her entire life in Barcelona. Her passion is music. She's been taking violin lessons since she was eight, but at twelve her father forbade her to continue. "He said music distracted me from my studies, but that's not true, because I was getting good grades," she says in a timid voice on the other end of the phone. Her father beat her and broke her violin so she wouldn't play anymore: "I told the counselors at the youth center what had happened, and some social workers came to talk to my parents. As a result, they treat me with more respect. I've always hoped that one day we could speak out."

Soraya, of Moroccan origin, prefers to conduct the interview in writing via WhatsApp. She would like to be a soccer player. He began excelling with the ball when he was little, but as soon as he hit puberty, his parents forbade him from playing. He is now 20 years old. "My parents told me they're going to find me a husband, and they won't let me leave the house alone. I always have to be accompanied by my nine-year-old brother or my fifteen-year-old sister."

No relationships with boys

"I used to play ping-pong in the park, but a friend of my mom's saw me playing with some boys, told my parents, and they wouldn't let me go anymore," laments Sukleen, 16, of Indian origin. To stop her from socializing with boys, her father also beat her. "I can't go to the pool or the summer camp either," she adds.

Enaam, 20, of Moroccan origin, is one of the few girls who have agreed to do a face-to-face interview and have her real name published. She puts on a childish face, but her ideas are very clear. Last summer, her older brother attacked her and locked her in the house for hours to prevent her from going to work. The police had to intervene. "She wanted me to show her the contract so she'd know how much I'm paid, but I don't want to show it to her because if I do, she'll keep all the money. I already contribute 200 euros a month to the household expenses."

There are many more cases: Mariam, 16, from a Pakistani family, claims she has no problems with her parents, but says they advise her not to associate with Catalans because "they're a bad influence." Khadija, of Moroccan origin, ran away from home at 19 with the help of the Valentes y Acompanyades association to avoid a forced marriage: "My parents thought I'd be a whore, that I wouldn't do anything good with my life. And I'm a hard-working, successful woman." She's now 27 and a computer programmer.

"If a girl has a boyfriend, she is considered a whore. And dancing and singing are also frowned upon because it is a way of attracting the opposite sex," says Huma Jamshed Bashir, president of the Pakistani women's association ACESOP, who clarifies that all these beliefs have more to do with tradition than religion. She also asserts that families are stricter here than in their countries of origin because "there are greater opportunities." In other words, young women are more likely to go astray here.

This is also confirmed by Moroccan-born social worker Hakima Abdoun Serrak, who specializes in gender violence. She says families can be more or less radical, but for all of them, their main concern is honor and reputation. "The important thing is that the girl arrives a virgin when she gets married, so the less she socializes, the better." Abdoun Serrak created a platform in 2019 with other young people to highlight the fact that "this is not a personal problem, but a collective one." In other words, all these girls must go through the same ordeal, and it's not just a situation specific to Raval. The platform was called Neswia, gave these young women a voice on social media and had a WhatsApp support group.

Forced marriages

"Mothers exert the most pressure. They are responsible for raising their daughters and cannot fail. They are emotionally blackmailed, even threatening suicide," explains Abdoun Serrak, who also asserts that "forced marriages are just the tip of the iceberg." Their [foreign] name is an impediment to finding a rental apartment or a job." In other words, it's not that easy to leave home.

The Neswia platform stopped being active a while ago. According to Abdoun Serrak, it required too much dedication, and they didn't receive the support they expected: "What hurts the most is the silence of the left, all of it."

The Catalan Ombudsman has initiated an ex officio investigation following the complaint filed by the Raval teachers. For its part, Barcelona City Council responded as follows after learning that the ARA (Argentine Association of Women) has verified that the council has been aware of the problem for some time: "We are aware of this concern. Municipal services are analyzing whether it is truly justified and what its scope would be, but at this time we still do not have the data to make an assessment."

The Department of Social Rights highlights that the amount allocated to socio-educational leisure activities for young people from vulnerable families increased from €892,162 in 2023 to €1.7 million in 2024, which represents an increase of 99.24%. However, this does not guarantee that girls of immigrant origin will participate.

And the Department of Feminism and Equality has not even taken any real action. prevent forced marriages. In October 2023, a new model for addressing this problem was approved with 49 specific measures for 2024 and 2025, updating the protocol that had been in place since 2020. However, most of the measures planned for last year were not implemented: neither was a specific guide on the subject drawn up, nor was a prevention pilot carried out with groups of women and men...

Forced marriages in Catalonia

"The agents who are supposed to implement these measures change with the governments, and in September there was a change of government, and everything has to be implemented again," explains Belén Gallo García, Director General for the Eradication of Gender-Based Violence, who assures that they have already begun training professionals on this topic. However, there is still nothing practical, tangible, of course, to prevent forced marriages in Catalonia, with a few exceptions. In La Garrotxa, for example, there is a specific protocol from the regional council that details the contacts of the professionals who should be contacted in these cases and lists the signs that should set off alarm bells. These indicators include a girl between 14 and 18 years old, and excessive parental control.

"It would have helped me if someone had asked me if something was wrong, if I had a problem," says Khadija, when asked how other girls who, like her, will have to go through the same ordeal, could help themselves. "We need to do socio-educational work with the communities," suggests Abdoun Serrak. And Carme Vinyoles, director and co-founder of one of the few Catalan organizations specializing in forced marriages, Brave and Accompanied, believes that an institutional campaign is necessary and that resources must be dedicated to solving the problem. Be that as it may, they all agree that the administration is the one that should take action.

"We understand the fear of the rise of the far right and the proliferation of hate speech against the immigrant population, but it's important to make visible the kind of sexist violence that nothing can justify," adds Vinyoles, who also believes that doing so will yield benefits: "That's a change for their own community."

Dossier Violations of the rights of immigrant girls 3 articles

• "I'm twenty years old, but they won't let me leave the house alone unless I'm with my brother, who's nine."
• "There are cultural practices that should not be tolerated."
• "The forced marriages that are detected are just the tip of the iceberg."