Acció Palestina: a newspaper to keep talking about it

On 8 October we launched the first issue of Acció Palestina at Llibreria Finestres Palestina: a 16-page newspaper edited by The PostTraumatic, with Palestinian, Lebanese, Israeli and Catalan voices. It was commissioned by Fundació Ferrer and coordinated by Rebobinart, and it is one of the actions in a programme that sets out to tell the story of Palestine through art.

From a mural to a newspaper

It all started with a simple idea: painting a mural at the offices of Fundació Ferrer. As we talked it through, the commission grew. The question stopped being what to paint on a wall and became how to keep people talking about Palestine. A genocide is being committed there: thousands of people are killed and driven out, singled out and stripped of their dignity. In the face of that, silence and fatigue also do harm.

That is how Acció Palestina came about: a programme of art actions driven by Fundació Ferrer and coordinated by Rebobinart. The idea is to tell the story through creation and initiative, in a creative, playful and, when needed, ironic way. We don’t want to fall into today’s defeatism, the feeling that nothing makes any difference. Before the newspaper there were other actions, such as the watermelon and blue lemonade stall on the beach on 1 August, or the Sónar advertising columns that pointed out the festival’s link with the KKR fund. The newspaper is one more, and we hope it won’t be the last.

Why a newspaper

Because a newspaper is where you find out what is happening, and we wanted to play with that language. Acció Palestina has a front page, headlines and sections for world news, culture, sport, politics, events, games and food, like any newspaper. But the rules get bent. There are fake news stories that sound all too plausible, a quiz on “what Europe has to do with the Israeli occupation” and a recipe for maqluba that asks you to spread Saturday’s papers on the table before turning the pot over.

The front page sets the tone: “Everything we have opinions about while bombs fall over there”. The newspaper doesn’t hide how uncomfortable it is to talk about Palestine from here. The first page is a dialogue with someone asking “but why are you making a newspaper about Palestine?”, and the answers take apart, one by one, the arguments we have all heard at some point. That is why there are Palestinian voices and European voices. We wanted our own contradictions to show too, when we talk about a reality we don’t live.