The pitch of the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium in Barcelona was covered today with 400 white t-shirts in memory of 400 footballers, coaches, and referees killed in Gaza.
This symbolic gesture, promoted by the ACT X PALESTINE campaign and the Catalan Football Federation, took place before Tuesday’s match between a Catalan and a Palestinian national team.
Gerard López, coach of Catalonia, and Ehab Abu Jazar, coach of Palestine, met and exchanged their respective national team jerseys, while also encouraging fans to fill the stadium.
The match, which organizers emphasized goes far beyond football and sport, will take place this Tuesday at 6:30 PM local time.
The aim is to place the Palestinian issue at the center of public debate and give it the importance it deserves. Sport has been a key tool for peace, international visibility, and social cohesion, as Barcelona demonstrated with the 1936 People’s Olympiad, conceived to confront Nazism, they recalled.
ACT X PALESTINE also referred to South Africa, where the sports boycott helped defeat apartheid and, subsequently, sport became a space for reconciliation.
Tomorrow, before the match, Catalan folk culture groups will fill the Olympic Stadium’s court, just as they were intended to do at the opening of the 1936 People’s Olympiad, which was cut short by Franco’s military coup.
The national anthems of Catalonia and Palestine will be performed by a specially formed ensemble of over 100 singers: the Cor Al-Balad choir, under the artistic direction of Selma Bruna and Salma Alhakim, with Yusor Hamed and Kelly Isaiah as soloists.
According to the organizers, the performance combines Catalan and Palestinian voices with a musical interpretation that unites the two cultures. The arrangements of the anthems are by Lina Makoul (Palestinian anthem) and Josep Viader (Catalan anthem).
The program also includes performances by Cute Mobb, Ginestà, Ovidi 4, the Palestinian poet and artist Mohamad Bitari, La Mari, and Ven’nus.
[ SOURCE: PRENSA LATINA ]
