covid-19

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#RegularizaciónYa: Spain’s anti-racism and anti-colonialism movement

30 June 2020

Immigrant exploitation is all around us. Many of Spain's 600,000 undocumented migrants are essential workers, They pick Europe's vegetables and keep them cheap, they take care of the elderly, clean the hospitals, deliver us food, build our homes and allow us to stay confined in them during the pandemic. Institutional exploitation of immigrants must stop, and that is exactly what Regularización Ya are here to do.

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The Congolese seamstress fighting the coronavirus crisis with culture

15 May 2020

Becha opened up her Lavapiés tailor shop two years ago with a big ambition: to get Spanish people wearing African clothes. But what she never anticipated was that her workshop would become a small hub for African migrants and, further still: a food bank for the local community.

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Teatro del Barrio stages Lavapiés’ biggest Covid-19 relief effort yet

12 May 2020

The same spotlights that once shone bright on the faces of Madrid's rising stars now illuminate food parcels for victims of Lavapiés' Covid-19 crisis.

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Inside a migrant safe house on ‘the coolest street in the world’

24 April 2020

Lavapiés is a neighbourhood of extremes. It was recently crowned the coolest neighbourhood in the world by Time Out Magazine, but is also one of the most multicultural – and poor – in Spain.

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The shrapnel-scarred bungalow challenging Spain’s civil war amnesia

19 April 2020

It is only by chance that a small bungalow in Madrid bearing the scars of Nazi shelling still survives. And it is only by pure coincidence that, just a decade ago, this fact came to light when photographer and archeologist Jose Latova stumbled across a photograph taken by the Hungarian war photographer Robert Capa. Its residents share their stories.

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Dragon heroes: the Lavapiés lockdown food bank helping vulnerable migrant families

8 April 2020

As Madrid remains the European epicentre of the coronavirus crisis, the city's most marginalised groups have been pushed even closer to the edge. Once dependent on charities and local organisations, many migrants are suddenly fending for themselves, but not if the Lavapiés Dragons have anything to do with it.

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Spain’s marginalised heroes fight against coronavirus – and racism

1 April 2020

While ordinary people with ordinary jobs occupy the headlines, there are people whose hero status has become their only form of survival.

Culture

The art of war on Coronavirus

21 March 2020

The fight against coronavirus echoes something hauntingly familiar in Spain, and it's from this dark period in history that local artist Félix Rodriguez has found inspiration. From the confines of his home in Madrid where he remains, like the rest of us, under lockdown, a renaissance is happening.