A packed Palau de la Música sings, dances, recites, and is moved by Palestine.

On the same day that UN Secretary-General António Guterres denounced that one in every 50 members of UNRWA—the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees—has been killed by Israel in Gaza, the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona hosted a massive charity event honoring ancient Palestinian culture.

The show, organized by various organizations and entitled Palestine - Culture is Resistance , combined music, dance, and poetry in six different performances. It took place in a packed venue—also filled with flags, protest T-shirts, and keffiyehs—with all proceeds donated to UNRWA.

The Faraj Suleiman Jazz Quintet and dancer Fadi Waked were among the most applauded.

If anything stood out during the more than two hours of the ceremony, it was the emotion, something that was evident from the very beginning when Palestinian poet Mahamed Bitari took the stage to recite some of his poems, first in Arabic and then in Catalan, and he did so with his hands shaking. "I'm very proud of my city," he said. And given his personal history, it's no wonder.

She was born in the Yarmouk refugee camp after her family fled their home and lived there until she was 23. Striving for a better life, she founded Èter Edicions, and her work includes Arabic translations of texts by Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, Miguel Hernández, and Miquel Martí i Pol, among many others.

Surely the highest-quality performance, at least musically, was that of the Faraj Suleiman Jazz Quintet, who visited Barcelona for the first time and conquered the Palau de la Música with songs in which each of their five instruments—piano, drums, trumpet, electric guitar, and double bass—had just the right amount of influence. Many of those present ended up standing, giving the first standing ovation of the evening. It was also then that the first chants of "stop genocide" and "long live Palestine" were heard.

The narrative arrived with The Gaza Monologues, a series of texts written by Gazans that explain their reality, initiated by the ASHTAR Theatre in Ramallah. The chosen one was that of 29-year-old Alaa Hajjaj, who recited, once again, Mahamed Bitari, with such powerful phrases as "Now our home has become a tent and we are refugees" and "I never would have thought that I wouldn't know how to protect my daughter from the cold and hunger. Before, I dreamed of a peaceful life, and now I dream of being left alive." During the reading of the text, illustrator Nadia Hafid drew a live Palestinian mother and child embracing. And when she finished, she couldn't help but cry with emotion.

Those same tears were brought to the audience by the performance of Palestinian dancer Fadi Waked, who, using only a few sheets—one red, one white—and a simple rope, presented his contemporary dance solo , *A Ticket to Another Migration *, in which he told a story fraught with suffering and tragedy, and which also championed human rights. And the audience was back on its feet, many wiping away tears.

Poetry returned to the stage with actress Mar Casas and musician Cristina Pérez. The performer recited a fragment of the poem "La llibertat del poble" (Freedom of the People) by Fadwa Tuqan, known as the "Poetess of Palestine." She was accompanied by Pérez, who played the clarinet during the reading of the verses and emphasized the most important word in the entire text: "freedom."

Read also Beach House passes its first test at Razzmatazz Martí Abad

“Palestinian culture is as old as the Earth, and despite attempts to subdue it, it endures and flourishes.”

The show, of high quality despite the symbolic €5 entrance fee, concluded on a high note with the performance of Athrodeel, a musical duo that fuses Arabic and Mediterranean music and which, for the occasion, became an orchestra of up to 16 musicians thanks to several students from the Liceu Conservatory, with a sublime vocal performance by Aseel Massoud and a majestic Ahmad Dyab on guitar.

As the final stretch drew to a close, poet Mahamed Bitari returned to the stage to assert that "every dance and every song is an act of memory and dignity." "Palestinian culture is as old as the Earth, and despite attempts to crush it, it endures and flourishes. Barcelona has not forgotten Palestine," he emphasized. And as the icing on the cake, Athrodeel themselves performed a moving "El cant dels ocells" ( The Birds' Song), in which Aseel Massoud's voice stood out once again, along with a cello playing as if Pau Casals were in the room.

For the last time, all the artists gathered on stage and bid farewell to the audience, who unanimously sang "Catalunya amb Palestina" (Catalan with Palestine), which could even be heard throughout the corridors of the Palau de la Música once the show ended. For more than 120 minutes, the show championed the ancient Palestinian culture in all its forms and rejected the barbarism of the Middle East.