50 years ago an institution was born that reflects the best of Barcelona. An independent center, born from civil society, dedicated to understanding the relationships between countries and the societies that form them.
During this half century, CIDOB, one of the most valued think tanks in the world, has been the door through which Barcelona has entered the world and the world, in Barcelona.
“The present increasingly revalues ??our raison d’être,” says director Pol Morillas. “It is increasingly clear that what happens in the world has a direct, fundamental impact on citizens, in the local sphere where they live.”
The pandemic and the war in Ukraine, with its impact on the price of energy and food, are good examples of this global reality that affects people’s daily lives.
CIDOB was created in 1973 by Pep Ribera and other people who had returned from Chile after the military coup that ended with the death of President Salvador Allende, then one of the most progressive leaders in Latin America.
Ribera had worked in the slums of Chile, doing episcopal work – he was a Jesuit priest at the time – helping the poor and defending civil rights and democracy. He feared that a large part of the documentation collected there would disappear under the regime of General Augusto Pinochet and he brought it to Barcelona.
CIDOB began as a documentation center in an apartment in the Eixample, but in 1988 it ended up settling in the Raval, in the heart of Barcelona, ??a densely populated neighborhood of immigrants from Asia, Africa, Latin America and also from other regions. Spanish, a nucleus of marginal population that included gypsies and people with very low resources.
Before the CCCB and MACBA opened their offices nearby, CIDOB had already understood that the neighborhood’s social fabric fitted perfectly with its mission.
The promoters of CIDOB came from political activism, culture and grassroots Christianity. They had created the group Agermanament in 1955 to reflect on what was then called the Third World. They had a great social commitment. Liberation theology was one of its main referents. They wanted to maintain the democratic memory of the peoples and, at the same time, establish an international dialogue that would deepen justice, solidarity and the defense of human rights in less developed countries.
While Spain overcame Francoism and ventured on the democratic path, Pep Ribera and his group undertook to offer basic international references so that Spanish society could successfully overcome the transition from the dictatorship.
At the same time, they offered asylum to dissidents fleeing from Pinochet’s Chile, opening a path to help refugees. Since then, this has been one of the hallmarks of Barcelona.
Among these refugees were, for example, the members of the Chilean group Quilapayún, a folk band that in September 1974 gave two concerts at the Palau d’Esports in Montjuic.
The police had warned Agermanament that there were songs that could not be played, but they ignored the warning and the venue collapsed when the bars of The united people will never be defeated, a hymn against political and social oppression, sounded. There were still two years to go before Lluís Llach gave one of the most emblematic concerts of the transition at the Palau d’Esports itself.
“From the first moment – recalls Pol Morillas – our main purpose has not been to advise the State on its foreign relations, but to accompany the citizen, interpret international events from a social point of view.”
Having its headquarters in an old convent located at number 12 Elisabets street, which later became the headquarters of the Institut del Teatre and primary school, contributes to this social proximity that the institution pursues.
The building was erected in 1587, as part of the Casa de la Misericòrdia complex, an institution devoted to helping unhappy girls and old women, poor or handicapped women, who found a home, education and care there.
El Raval continues to be a difficult place today, where the underlying currents that guide history are shown more harshly. Together with the MACBA and the CCCB, close to the CIDOB, the Institut d’Estudis Catalans and several faculties of the University of Barcelona, ??the social deprivations that democracy and progress have not been able to eradicate persist. Understanding why this is so is part of CIDOB’s mission.
“The world has become small -explains Pol Morillas- and to understand it we have to get out of the classic mental frameworks, be able to address geopolitics and security, the struggle between the superpowers, but also the growth of cities, the development sustainability and migrations, all of which make up contemporary societies”.
In the same 1988, the year of the inauguration of the headquarters in the Raval, CIDOB organized a seminar on perestroika and the future of the Soviet Union. The dissidence in exile came as well as the promoters of the reforms who, from within, under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to save a country that was then an empire on the brink of collapse.
For four days, a group of international experts exposed the political and economic errors of the communist regime, as well as the repression of which the Soviet people had been the victim. They debated how democracy and the free market should be introduced to prevent a traumatic end to the Soviet Union. There was a genuine desire for reform or, what is the same, for the controlled demolition of the Soviet pillars to build a new country.
Barcelona, ??hand in hand with CIDOB, facilitated a dialogue that failed, as the Barcelona Process would later fail, the 1995 project to create a great Mediterranean community that would unite the Arab and European countries, and the solidarity movement with Sarajevo during the Bosnia-Herzegovina war.
More important than these setbacks, however, was and continues to be the will of an important part of the citizenry and institutions so that Barcelona continues to be a referential city in the search for a better world. This is the legacy and, at the same time, the commitment that CIDOB assumes.
