The Democracy at risk. Culture and barbarity residents went to Barcelona for two debate sessions at the city’s contemporary culture centre (CCCB). The programme featured two panel discussions. In the first, Daniela Ortiz and Hibai Arbide reflected on “Les fronteres que ens segueixen atravessant” (The borders that continue to pierce us). The speakers discussed conflicts along national and international borders. They both wondered whether, throughout history, borders have always given rise to violence and whether there is a correlation between border conflicts and new social challenges.

Then Pastora Filigrana, Florencia Montes and Núria Güell took part in the panel discussion “Una democràcia de les diferències” (A democracy of differences). The three residents questioned whether experiences historically marginalised by capitalist modernisation would now be a starting point for rebuilding a democratic culture based on differences.

Hibai Arbide is a Basque journalist who was based in Barcelona for many years and has lived in Athens for over a decade. He has been part of independent social movements since the 1990s, including the anti-globalisation movement and networks against EU border policies. He is currently a member of the Muzungu Producciones communication group, for which he has covered the migratory crises and border issues in south-eastern Europe for the past several years.

Daniela Ortiz was born in Cusco. Her recent projects and research focus on the European migration control system, links to colonialism and the legal mechanisms created by European institutions as a means of wreaking violence on migrant and racialised populations. She has also worked on several projects about the Peruvian upper class and their exploitative relationship with domestic workers.

Pastora Filigrana (Seville) is a labour lawyer, trade unionist and feminist and Roma rights activist. She gained great media presence defending the fight of Moroccan strawberry harvesters in Huelva in 2019, and her book El pueblo gitano contra el sistema-mundo (2020) has been very influential.

Florencia Montes Páez is a political scientist who specialises in political philosophy. In 2011, she founded No Tan Distintes in Buenos Aires. This project for vulnerable women and LGBT+ includes group homes, training for comprehensive, transfeminist and popular support, and a space for historical memory, reparation and justice. Between 2015 and 2018, she managed Frida, the first integration centre in Argentina for cis women, trans people, transvestites and lesbians on the streets.

Núria Güell is a visual and performance artist who is known internationally for her work related to power systems, which not only criticises or represents but always contains her own practice, generating distorting gestures and building alternative forms of organisation, subjectivity or relationality.