Patricia McGill tells life stories and weaves oral networks in schools, nursing homes, museums or dry stone cabins. The daughter of a political exile from the National Liberation Movement of Uruguay, she fled with her mother to Chile and from there to Sweden. After returning to Uruguay and living in Madrid and Barcelona she has chosen to stay, Florejacs. In this small town of La Segarra, with 30 inhabitants, she has installed the headquarters of La Faula, the Catalan association of oral storytelling professionals.
From Florejacs, he takes his stories to any place and every year promotes the Segamots, the Segarra Oral Storytelling Festival to rediscover the region. It gives continuity to the festival with its Contes a la Catxipanda with those it tours in old people’s homes and with its didactic proposal in schools and museums. In the last edition, dedicated to stories that give relief, the voices of three storytellers reached Estaràs, Concabella, Els Plans de Sió, Cervera Torrefeta and Florejacs Cervera y Guissons.
“It is an essentially feminine festival, which has several legs, the narrative can be on a stage, it can be in a school, it can be in a residence, it can be in a house, it can be in a library, it can be in the street and Wherever he goes, he always manages to create community, create culture, raise awareness of identity,” says Patricia McGill. She is its director.
He is passionate about his hours in nursing homes. “When you go to tell stories at a residence it’s like setting a trigger, I don’t really like that word… you say one word and a thousand come out. Wherever you tell a story, the people who are listening to you will tell you hundreds.
Remember a group of ladies between 98 and 102 years old who told me not to take a year to return: “We girls, when the war ended, couldn’t go back to school, we met at the fountain and told each other those stories that “You tell us,” one of them told me.
Patricia is one of the first twelve women of the Lleida land of transformative women project. With it, the Government Delegation wants to give visibility to women in the rural world who generate changes in their environment with social, economic, territorial, environmental, artistic, technological or agricultural impact. She is excited by the name of the project because she _says_ “in stories transformation is always present, in myths too.”
“For me, _he says_, being in this group is an honor. I have met very powerful women in different fields that open up possibilities to weave more networks, weave stories, projects, among all of them. “I think that we are fighting from the rural world, but not only for the rural world, but for the entire world,” she concludes.
