WHITE NOISE

Radio Pakcelona, Corto y Cambio

by Rachael Merola

Barcelona is home to some 28.000 Pakistani, 10.000 Indian, and 8.000 Bengali immigrants. Besides several cities in Britain, Barcelona is the city with the most concentrated population of Pakistanis in Europe. 69% of all Pakistanis in Spain live in Barcelona. Of this number, more than half reside in the Raval or Ciutat Vella.

Overall, 90% of the total increase in population in Catalunya from 2001-2005 was due to immigration. The influx of immigrants has led to a slew of new programs and laws hastily introduced to deal with the nouvinguts; meanwhile, citizens have struggled to make room in their already packed city. The changing face of Barcelona has been cause for alarm for some and exhilarating for others.

In March 2006, the first and only radio station targeting Pakistani and other South-central Asian immigrants opened. Radio Pakcelona broadcast in 13 languages on the radio (105.4 FM) and on the Internet (www.pakcelona.com), offering programming designed to help facilitate integration, including courses in català and castellano, legal advice, and information about the Catalan way of life.

Heralded by locals, foreigners, and government officials alike as a welcome resource for immigrants who have often remained marginalized and isolated in society, Radio Pakcelona quickly became a pillar of the community, organizing events and publishing a magazine in addition to their daily broadcasts.

However, in April 2007, barely a year after opening, they received an order from the Generalitat de Catalunya to cease their on-air transmissions. The rest, as they say, es historia...

A QUEST FOR LENTILS

It was lunchtime and my stomach was rumbling. "Lentils," I thought, "lentils with chorizo. With some Cola Cau to wash it down." Fantasizing about my meal as I walked to my local Spar supermercat to pick up the missing ingredients, I turned the corner into Plaça St Jaume and was accosted by the sight of 150+ immigrants swarming like agitated bees outside the massive doors of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Chanting and carrying signs in Urdu, Català, and Castellano, sporting designer jeans and linen kurtas in equal numbers, it was like a bizarre mezcla of contrasting scenes from downtown Karachi and downtown Badalona.

I must admit before continuing that I am a bit of a manifestació connoisseur. Living only a block from Plaça St. Jaume, location of both the Barcelona and Catalan government centers, has afforded me the privilege (or curse) of being painfully aware of the extensive quejas of the populace, which range from bullfighting protests to Tibet Lliure sit-ins. I am desensitized, I admit. Passive hunger strikes make only a faint impression on me at this point, and I have walked unfazed past firecracker-throwing okupa youths to get to the Jaume I metro stop more times than I care to remember. I am not easily impressed, ladies and gents, no I am not. This protest, however, could not simply be ignored.

My interest piqued and hunger temporarily forgotten, I ventured into the crowd to find out more. I was promptly approached to sign a petition by Babar, a Pakistani man with bleached blond hair and flashy sunglasses. He moved to Barcelona nine years ago after a fifteen-year stint in Tokyo. He says he used to be a professional fútbol player. His friends call him "Rocky." Would I like to have a coffee with him after the protest, he implored?

Back to reality. Rocky filled me in on the dirty details of the protest: In April 2007, Radio Pakcelona received a letter from the Direcció General de Comunicació i Serveis de Difusió Audiovisuals, alleging that the station's signal was interfering with that of Flaix FM, one of Catalunya's most popular radio stations. Pakcelona operated on 105.4FM, and Flaix FM operates on 105.7FM. The Generalitat opened an expediente, demanding that Pakcelona either cease their broadcasts or pay a 60.000€ fine.

In October 2007, Pakcelona contracted an independent telecommunications engineer to conduct tests to confirm the signal interferences mentioned in the letter. The engineer conducted tests at all of the indicated sites of interference and found no evidence of any signal interference. Radio Pakcelona sent the official report to the Cultura i Mitjans de Comunicació of the Generalitat for consideration, and continued to broadcast.

However, in February 2008 they received another order to close, citing the interference once again. Wanting to avoid paying a 60.000€ fine, Radio Pakcelona went off the air at midnight on March 24th, 2008. To add insult to injury, only three minutes later another radio station opened up on the same frequency—also without a license.

The story could end here, but it does not. Radio Pakcelona listeners were unhappy about being deprived of their querido Pakcelona, and troubled by what they viewed as hypocrisy on the part of the government. After all, the station had just been visited several months before by the Generalitat's Secretary of Immigration, Oriol Amorós, who had praised Pakcelona's innovative efforts to help nouvinguts adapt to their new surroundings. And, though they admittedly didn't have a license to broadcast, there are about 30 other emisoras piratas operating in Barcelona for the Generalitat to pick on.

Pues, what criterion does the Generalitat use to decide who stays open, and who receives la carta negra?

THE METHOD TO THEIR MADNESS

According to the Press Secretary of the Cultura i Mitjans de Comunicació, Daniel Hernández, Radio Pakcelona was shut down "simply as a result of operating without a license and causing a signal interference with a station that did have a license." He points out that there is an expediente open for every radio station in the city that has a reported interference — thirteen, in total, out of the thirty that broadcast without a license in Barcelona.

"The closure of Radio Pakcelona was not an issue of persecution—it was an issue of legality. We have a responsibility to protect the rights of radio stations that broadcast legally, with a license, such as Flaix FM." He went on to say that Pakcelona's report, in which they hired an external engineer to verify the interference, was not considered valid — the ministry never considers external reports since they could be created by "interested" parties.

And what of Latino FM, the radio station that opened without a license on the same frequency only 3 minutes after Radio Pakcelona shut down? "We have sent them a letter demanding that they close, too," the Press Secretary assured me.

What are the costs of such unequivocal closures? Shutting down all emisoras piratas would end signal interference, certainly, but are uninterrupted broadcasts worth the price of taking away a popular resource that helps immigrants? Pakcelona's programming includes classes in Catalan and Castellano, each given three times a day during the week. There are also driving classes, programs for children, broadcasts of jobs, and call-in shows for legal advice. In closing Pakcelona, was the Generalitat throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

PAKCELONA WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS: SHAKES, JITTERS, FACING REALITY?

Some immigrants in Barcelona had become so reliant on the station that they once had a woman call in who was lost in Barcelona. Based on her descriptions of her surroundings, they were able to pinpoint her location, and sent out an on-air request for her rescue. A listener who drives a taxi volunteered to go pick her up and deliver her to her doorstep.

Clearly, the station was more than mild daily entertainment — for some immigrants, it was their sole lifeline in big bad Barcelona. For Pakistani women, especially, Pakcelona had been an indispensable tool for adjusting to their new life abroad.

Almas, a woman from Lahore who has been in Barcelona for just over a year, said, "Pakcelona has been one of the main ways that I came to understand the culture, language, and way of life of Catalonia. In the mornings, as soon as I woke up, I put on Radio Pakcelona. I would leave it on all day and listen to the music and Bollywood news from home, and follow the language classes."

For other listeners, Radio Pakcelona was a way of maintaining their ties to their homeland and staying on top of current issues there. One listener lamented that now he would have nothing to talk about in the evenings when he meets with other immigrants on the Rambla de Raval, called Prashan Rambla by many Pakistanis ("Prashan" means nostalgia in Urdu, and the Rambla de Raval is nicknamed Prashan Raval by many Pakistanis since they convene there every vespre).

That Pakcelona has cultivated a bevy of hardcore groupies in such a short time raises concerns about whether the station might be doing more to hurt integration than inspire it. Raja Shafik, founder of Radio Pakcelona, said in an interview, "there is not one Pakistani (in Barcelona) who has not heard of or listened to Radio Pakcelona." If this is so, is the station achieving its goal of helping Pakistanis become active participants in Catalan society, or is it accomplishing little more than creating a comfortable bubble for its listeners, allowing them to operate in a microcosm that bears little resemblance to the outside world?

Did Pakcelona do more harm than good in the integration process?

THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE LEGEND

Wanting answers, I ventured out to the Radio Pakcelona headquarters in el Prat de Llobregat. I wanted to meet the founder of Pakcelona, Raja Shafik, who is somewhat of a legend in the community, and see what their workspace looked like. After spending about 45 minutes trying to figure out how exactly one gets to El Prat without the use of teleporting mirrors and space vortexes (I also tried clicking my heels together and repeating, "There's no place like El Prat, there's no place like El Prat), I gave up and decided to go by car. Plugging the address into my GPS, I went merrily on my way...

Twenty minutes later my Tomtom cheerily informed me "ja has arribat". Arribat...where?? I asked myself, inspecting my surroundings. It was already dark out and everything appeared to be closed for the night — maybe forever. Apparently it's only in Barcelona that the party is just getting started at 23.00h. The only thing open was a shawarma shop. Bar Ayamonte—kebabs a domicilio — read the twinkling sign.

I hesitated to enter a shawarma shop to ask the whereabouts of a Pakistani radio station (I could almost hear the Pakistani camarero thinking "Oh great, this blonde American girl thinks that all Pakistani immigrants have some kind of radar to locate one another"). But the shawarma shop shone like a beacon of hope and emanated the scent of juicy kebab, so I entered and approached the waiter.

"Ahh, you are here to visit Radio Pakcelona," he said with a grin after I explained my situation. "We are in the middle of a broadcast now. Right this way," he said, beckoning me through a curtained divide into the back of the shop. We walked through a darkened room full of stacked chairs and tables—"for the summer terrace," he explained—then entered a tiny room with another, even tinier room within. Across the door was a sign reading "Radio Pakcelona".

I lingered awkwardly for a few minutes, gawking at a man in the interior room talking animatedly into a microphone in Urdu. Finally, Raja Shafik appeared. A compact man with kind eyes and an engaging smile, he exudes positive energy and buen rollo, equal parts avuncular community activist and clever entrepreneur.

Shafik has been in Barcelona for 33 years — long enough, he says, to make him more Spanish than Pakistani. Originally from Ghelum, a city in the Punjab region of Pakistan, he has spent his years in Barcelona doing "una mica de tot", including work in hostelerias, almacenes, casas, tiendas and even a stint at the Catalan Radio Empordà.

He began the Radio Pakcelona in 2006, he said, to help the Pakistani and South-central Asian community integrate into their new surroundings — no easy task, according to him. "There are people who live for 10 years in Barcelona without ever knowing the name of the barri that they live in. It's incredible — they know that they live, for example, on Carrer Princesa, but if you ask what neighborhood that lies in they wouldn't know what to tell you. That's bad — people have to know these things. I want people to know about the world that they live in, not be separate and closed into their houses all day."

In his opinion, the key to integration is to give immigrants the means to succeed. Many immigrants, he says, don't understand the customs of their new country, nor do their new neighbors understand them. "It's even more difficult because many immigrants work from sunrise to sundown, sometimes without vacation, and don't even have time for personal necessities. They don't know what free time is, or how to enjoy what the "European life" offers — their reality is far from the Europe that they imagined from afar".

Shafik continues, saying, "It is our responsibility to help immigrants integrate themselves. The mind is like a candle - you have to light it in order for it to glow. With Pakcelona we try to ignite the fire and give immigrants the will and means to integrate."

THE MONSTER MELTING POT

The emerging face of Barcelona is as unwieldy and ungainly as that of any European city whose current population growth is almost entirely owed to immigration from the extranjero.

Ask many old-timers what it was like 20 years ago and they will describe a tranquil city filled with locals pushing strollers and chatting idly. Stores were closed on Sundays (como dios manda!), and generations of families still lived in the same neighborhood. They went for Sunday walks on the Ramblas. They knew all their neighbors' business. Most had never even heard of curry.

In present day Barcelona, entrepreneurs hawk samosas on the street at 3 am. You can find arsenals of beer hidden in the gutters. You hear Urdu, Hindi, Arabic, and Senegalese French spoken in addition to Spanish and Catalan. Every corner features a different sunburned tourist eating gelato, and every hip bar contains a table of laughing expats. The Rambla de Raval is filled with clusters of Pakistani men, strolling slowly, stroking their beards thoughtfully.

This new face of Barcelona calls up some important questions. Are the government policies created in response to immigration effective in incentivising integration? How do different policies interact at a local level; do they achieve their aims, or do they contradict each other, resulting in an outcome that leaves all parties involved a bit worse off?

Outside of the political realm, how are the unique challenges faced by immigrants being addressed in society? Are integration initiatives successful, or do they backfire by creating a safety bubble for immigrants to operate within? How can the new cultures and languages of Barcelona fit into the preexisting framework? At what point will Barcelona cease to be Barcelona, and instead be Pakcelona, Guirilandia, or a whole different monster?

By most accounts, the tide of immigration to Catalunya is strong and shows no signs of abating in the near future. In this way, Radio Pakcelona is a litmus test for the overall climate of Barcelona — many languages, cultures, races and religions whirling and colliding, both on the street and over the airwaves. Old vs. new, shock vs. comfort, acceptance vs. rejection, integration vs. isolation: love it or hate it, Radio Pakcelona has become the portavoz for South-central immigrants, and they have refused to be silenciat.