2023-12-24 22:29:10
“In Gaza, human rights, our rights, are being murdered. It is a crisis of humanity,” laments Ana Fernández (Seville, 1965). The winner of a Goya award for Best New Actress for Solas (1999), has engaged in a battle from the cultural world to denounce what is happening in Gaza after the outbreak of the war between Hamas and Israel.
The artists seek the support of the world of culture for the Palestinian people
The Sevillian actress was one of the signatories of the Manifesto of Spanish Artists against the Gaza massacre that was read on November 7 at the Palestinian Embassy in Madrid, along with thirty artists. Through tears, with a broken voice and the manifesto in her hand, she asked for “an immediate ceasefire” and recalled that the role of culture must serve to “build bridges.” Among the signatories were the singers Rozalén, Ismael Serrano, Coque Malla, Ramoncín – who also attended the reading -, the writer Luis Landero, the actresses Emma Suárez, Marisa Paredes, the recently deceased Itziar Castro and the director and actor Juan Diego Botto, among more than 350 artists.
“Culture is the bridge of knowledge and sensitivity that unites us, unites us and enriches other peoples,” he tells elDiario.es. Ana Fernández, who has forged a career with selected films such as Talk to her by Pedro Almodóvar Story of a kiss by José Luis Garci, for which she was nominated for the Goya for Best Actress. “There is a terrible assault on the population by the occupying government and international standards are being violated,” she emphasizes. She also points out that, personally, the conflict of the Palestinian people “has never been foreign to her” and that the closeness to the testimonies of many of the companions of the Platform of Women Artists have made her “become more aware of the situation” to such an extent. that he feels it “adhered to his skin.”
On the day of the reading of the manifesto he appealed that the support of culture is “totally basic.” She was one of those who shouted, at the end of the press conference, a “Free Palestine.” She warns that the murdered boys and girls, the destroyed families, the sick dying in hospitals, the mothers who mourn their children or the children who mourn their mothers are not “simple numbers” because they have “names, faces and voices.” . Gazan authorities estimate that more than 7,000 minors have died in the Israeli offensive. And the impact is not only on the deceased, the workers of the NGO Doctors Without Borders have coined an acronym to identify the frightened and alone minors they are in charge of caring for: WCNSF (Wounded Child No Surviving Family): injured child, no surviving family.
The actress explains that she decided to support the manifesto because it seems necessary to “use all possible means to stop the deaths in Gaza and the West Bank” and refers to the role played by international organizations, since “the laws for the deaths are not even being respected.” wars or fundamental rights.” She attacks the institutions stating that “neither the national government, nor the Europeans, nor the United Nations” have exerted sufficient pressure to stop the killings. In recent days, activists have seen how the US has vetoed the UN resolution for a ceasefire that they were waiting for and finally only Spain, Belgium, Ireland and Malta have raised their voices to demand it.
Activists, in addition to manifestos and calls for action on the streets, have social networks left. “A door through which we can witness Israel’s occupation” of Palestine and “show the world that tremendous injustice,” he says.
A political sensitivity
The Spanish actress affirms that “culture as a means of raising awareness is fundamental.” Culture “the means by which human beings see themselves from the outside and give critical meaning to their own existence.” The artist affirms that cultural workers are supposed to have “a developed sensitivity that must be manifested in these cases.”
The manifesto that Ana Fernández read has been added to an open letter to Spanish cultural institutions that has gathered more than 1,700 signatures and that also endorses solidarity with the Palestinian people. There are names such as the artists Eugenio Merino and Santiago Sierra, the filmmaker and writer Luis López Carrasco, the artistic director of La Virreina Valentín Roma or the playwrights Pablo Messiez and Andrés Lima. And it was not the only document: another manifesto with a thousand signatures from cultural personalities basically asked for the same thing: a ceasefire. Among them, José Sacristán, Juan Diego Botto, Rozalén, Silvia Pérez Cruz, Miguel Ríos, Charo López, Antonio de la Torre, Clara Lago, Javier Fesser, José Corbacho, Fernando Trueba or Fernando Colomo. The manifesto was read, supported by a hundred of them, at the end of a march in Madrid that brought together some 35,000 people at the end of October.
Precisely, the union of the cultural world that these manifestos reflect is what Fernández appeals to, because “the world of culture can help” like any other person with a “minimum of conscience or sensitivity.” He insists that the goal is to “put pressure on governments” to do everything possible to “stop the terrible bleeding” produced in Gaza, since since October 7, more than 17,000 people have died in Gaza, 70% of them women and children, and nearly 1.9 million people have been displaced, that is, 85% of the population. Another point on which he speaks is that people who work in the field of culture usually have “a certain relevance” and, consequently, in some way they can “speak out against the barbarities” that happen in the world.
Culture takes time to reach society and make people feel that situations like those in Gaza are unacceptable
Regarding the role of culture in minimizing or stopping conflicts, he insists that apart from personal actions of denouncing the State of Israel and supporting Palestine, creative cultural actions should be “supported” by helping them to be “known and disseminated.” However, he is not optimistic because culture “takes time to reach society” and, above all, he points out that “it takes time to make people feel that situations like those in Gaza are unacceptable,” but artists should not let to insist.
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