An institution that reflects the best of Barcelona was born 50 years ago. An independent center, born from civil society, dedicated to understanding the relationships between countries and the societies that make them up.
During this half century, Cidob, one of the most highly rated think tanks in the world, has been the door through which Barcelona has entered the world; and the world, in Barcelona.
“The present is increasingly revaluing our reason for being”, says director Pol Morillas. “It is increasingly clear that what happens in the world has a direct, fundamental impact on citizens, in the local area in which they live”.
The pandemic and the war in Ukraine, with the impact it has on the price of energy and food, are good examples of this global reality that affects our daily lives.
Cidob was born in 1973 thanks to Pep Rivera 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.
Rivera had worked in the slums of Chile doing episcopal duties – then he was a Jesuit priest – helping the poor and defending civil rights and democracy. He feared that much of the documentation that was there would be intercepted by the regime of General Augusto Pinochet and he took it to Barcelona.
Cidob began as a documentation center in a flat in the Eixample, but in 1988 it was installed in the Raval, in the heart of Barcelona, ??a neighborhood densely populated by immigrants from Asia, Africa, Latin America and also from other Spanish regions, a core of marginal population that included gypsies and people without many resources.
Before CCCB and Macba opened their headquarters nearby, Cidob had already understood that the social fabric of the Raval fit perfectly with its mission.
The promoters of Cidob came from political activism, culture and grassroots Christianity. They had created the Twinning group 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 points of reference. 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 onto the democratic path, Pep Rivera and his group offered tools of an international context for Spanish society to successfully overcome the transition from the dictatorship.
At the same time, they offered asylum to dissidents fleeing Pinochet’s Chile, and opened a path to help refugees. Since then this has been one of Barcelona’s hallmarks.
Among these exiles were, for example, the members of the Chilean group Quilapayún, a folk band that in September 1974 gave two concerts at the Montjuïc Sports Palace. The police had warned Agermanament that some songs could not be played, but they ignored the warning and the venue collapsed when El pueblo unido jamás será vencido, an anthem against political and social repression, played. It was still two years before Lluís Llach offered one of the most emblematic concerts of the transition at the same sports hall.
Pol Morillas recalls that “from the very beginning our main purpose has not been to advise the State in its foreign relations, but to accompany the citizen, to 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 seat of the Theater Institute and primary education school, contributes to this social closeness that pursues the institution.
The building was erected in 1587 as part of the complex of the house of mercy, an institution dedicated to helping unhappy girls and old women, poor or disabled women; people who found a home, an education and care there.
The Raval today remains a difficult place, where the undercurrents that guide history are shown most starkly. Next to the Macba and the CCCB, close to the Cidob, the Institute of Catalan Studies and various faculties of the University of Barcelona, ??survive the social shortcomings that democracy and progress have not succeeded in eradicating. Understanding why this is so is part of Cidob’s mission.
“The world has become small – explains Pol Morillas – and to understand it we must leave the classic mental frameworks, be able to address geopolitics and security, the struggle between the superpowers, but also the growth of cities , sustainable development and migration, everything that forms contemporary societies”.
In 1988, the year the headquarters in Raval opened, the Cidob organized a seminar on perestroika and the future of the Soviet Union. It was attended by dissidents in exile and also by the promoters of the reforms that, from within, under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to save a country that was then an empire on the verge of collapse.
For four days, a group of international experts exposed the political and economic mistakes of the communist regime, and also the repression of which the Soviet people had been victims. They debated how democracy and the free market should be introduced to avoid a traumatic end to the Soviet Union. There was a genuine desire for reform, that is, for the controlled demolition of the USSR.
Barcelona, ??thanks to Cidob, facilitated a dialogue that failed, as the Barcelona Process would later fail, that 1995 project to create a great Mediterranean community that would unite Arab and European countries, and the solidarity movement with Sarajevo in the Bosnian war.
More important than these setbacks, however, was and continues to be the desire of a significant part of the public and institutions for Barcelona to continue to be a reference city in the search for a better world. This is the legacy and, at the same time, the commitment that Cidob assumes.
