Sunday Pick: Barcelona: streetwear with a political twist | Far Flung

0:06Hey, TED Talks Daily listeners, I'm Elise Hu. Today we're bringing you another Sunday pick where we share an episode of another podcast from the TED Audio Collective, handpicked by us for you. When I hear Barcelona, I immediately think of the vivid colors and the whimsical lines and shapes of Gaudí's architecture, Picasso's paintings, and flamenco music and dance. But there's another art scene in this famous Spanish city that's breaking into the mainstream from the margins. In this episode of our podcast Far Flung, host Salim Reshamwala introduces us to Barcelona's street vendors known as Monteros, who are bringing a political twist to the art of streetwear.

0:47Listen to how this group of people, often immigrants without legal protections or rights to work in Spain, fought to form a union to gain the voice they needed and ended up creating a global and people-centered fashion label that highlights human rights in the process. To hear more unique ideas and stories from around the globe, check out Far Flung, available wherever you get your podcasts. Now on to the episode, right after a quick break.

1:38And it takes one of the harder turns I've ever seen in a commercial to reveal that he is running on the beach toward a boat full of people who look distressed. It looks like a migration situation and there is a new narrator who is now visible. She's a black woman in a room full of other black people. She's saying life is not a sneaker commercial. We know the race is full of traps. We didn't come here in search of a dignified life for us and for our loved ones. We came here to change the rules of the game, to make them fairer for everyone. Because it's not just about doing it, but doing it right.

2:28This brand, Topmanta, it's unlike any other streetwear brand I've come across. Take a streetwear brand like, say, Supreme, which started in a small 1990s New York City storefront and was marketed with counterculture messaging. Right now, it's actually a big player in a huge multimillion dollar industry. Meanwhile, in Barcelona, a group of street vendors who'd been selling goods on sidewalks have found a way to double down on streetwear's outsider roots. birthing this brand known as Top Manta. It's the first time in the world that a union of people without papers have achieved what we've done in a few years.

3:16I'm Salim Reshanwala, and from TED, this is Far Flung. In every episode, we visit a different location to understand ideas that flow from that place. And today, a story from the streets of Barcelona. where a group of immigrants changed the game and, in the process, gave us a new perspective on what it means to belong.

3:46I was in the same situation as all the African youth who, at the age of 18, have to work and support their families and don't have the opportunity to do so. That is Lamine. He came to Spain by boat, along with other migrants. And that's Mark Sanchez, my co-producer, a Barcelona native. Hey, Salim. So, Mark, where does Topmanta's story begin? Well, it starts with a few guys who came to Barcelona from West Africa, more specifically from Senegal. And Lamine says one of the main reasons why so many people left was because the local government started to allow illegal fishing practices.

4:33This massive arrival was also caused by corrupt governments selling our entire sea. Fishermen used to use their boats to fish for a week, three days. They would return with lots of fish. But now, there are European boats fishing in our seas using bombs and nets. They've screwed up the whole sea, and now there is no fish. Now they have sold all the sea, and there is no fish in Senegal.

5:05Many fishermen have decided to transport people coming here to Europe.

5:16Like a lot of people around the world, when prospects disappeared, Lamine decided to try his luck elsewhere. But why is Barcelona an attractive place for migrant workers in the first place? Like, why not Madrid or another city in Spain or any other part of the world? Yeah, that's a good question and the answer isn't clear. I think Spain as a whole, because it's along the Mediterranean Sea and it's closer to the African continent, so then it's easier for them to come here. but I think Barcelona might be attractive because there are many international people living here. Or maybe it has something to do with Barcelona being part of the Catalan region, which is known to be more entrepreneurial.

6:01Oh, interesting. So there's the geography of Spain as a whole, but it sounds like there's this entrepreneurial streak in Catalonia itself. Well, at least that is what we Catalonians think about ourselves. Okay, so after the boat trip, Lamine is here. His introduction to this country, though, was not a positive one.

6:26I arrived here and they didn't consider at all what I had lived through at sea. Pain, hunger, the obstacles that I had to overcome. I thought they were going to welcome me with open arms and lots of love. And for the first time, they put me in handcuffs and threw me in a cell, without having committed any crime and no reason.

6:55When the police find people that are trying to get into the country, they take them to a center. And they stay there for like a while. It's not legally a jail or a prison. But as you can imagine, it's very, very similar.

7:13When they tell you you're not going to be deported and they're going to let you live here, the police give you papers that say you have a three-year exclusion. That means you're in Spain, but it's like you're not in Spain. He's allowed to be in Spain for three years, but he's not allowed to work, which feels a little absurd. And we talked to an immigration lawyer, and he didn't have a super clear answer to why this is that way. but it seems like it's in place because less time than that would encourage migration. Way more people might imagine getting by for a year without work and a longer length of time would keep everyone out.

7:52And I was in that system as well but I came from a place of privilege. I'm, you know, I'm Latina and... That is Marina Esmeralda. I just had a different set of circumstances that really allowed me to benefit from the process in a way that they couldn't. She is an architect and an artist from Brazil. She came to Barcelona as a student 10 years ago. I'd always known that I wanted to leave Brazil and maybe live abroad, but that was never really clear how that was going to be sustainable. But once I got to Barcelona, I just completely fell in love with the place. and even before the first time I visited it, there was just something about the place that I knew I was meant to be there and I wanted to be there for 10 months and it's been 10 years.

8:49To me, the difference between Marina and Lamine's story highlights who can and cannot find a sense of belonging here. Right, because for migrants like Lamine, the three-year exclusion meant that he was left with four options to make a living.

9:07The first one is going to work in the fields. The second one is work as a junkman looking for metal to sell. Another path, it's a very bad path that we don't want to choose. It's selling drugs. And the fourth one is selling on the streets. So, Mark, when Lamine says he's selling on the street, what exactly does he mean? La Min is talking about being a mantero, which is the slang word for illegal street vendor in Spain. And the selling usually happens in the most touristic areas in the city. And it's usually men of all ages, often of West African descent, selling things like shirts, bags and other wares.

9:49I was asked before, right? Yes, in the morning. You know, it's funny. My dad was actually... a street vendor in London for a bit, selling Indian trinkets in Trafalgar Square. And even when I was little, he'd import things as a side business. And sometimes he'd enlist me to help sell them at garage sales and flea markets. So I'm always interested in the techniques and tricks of getting people to buy things street side. It takes a lot of skill. And these guys are good salesmen. They make you laugh and they know how to talk to you no matter where you're from. Hello, sir. Spanish, English, Italian.

10:33Spanish, Spanish, Spanish. Information is free.

10:38How often are you yourself seeing street vendors in Barcelona? How common is it? I would say it's pretty normal since the Olympics in 92. Since then, I think that there's more tourists in the city, and I guess it was a good opportunity to sell things. But Marina's memory of her first encounter with Mantero is much more clear. The first time I got to Barcelona, a few days in, I was visiting Barguer, one of Gaudí's big works in the city with my family. And there were Manteros there with their blankets and their wares spread on the blankets. and people love to come up and touch everything and try them on and bargain and that kind of thing.

11:30But there was just this undercurrent of tension that I felt particularly on this day because I could see that the guy was tense. I think the police were coming up and he just wanted to leave, but he was also waiting to conclude a sale. And I don't remember if he did or not, but I just remember being left with this strong impression of, oh wow, these guys have a hard time. That's, I would say, a normal situation for Amantero. because they have to look around just in case this moment arrives. And actually, the word Mantero comes from the Spanish word Manta, which means blanket. Oh. And in fact, the blanket has a rope around it.

12:23Just in case this moment happens, they can gather up everything in the blanket and run away. When you pull the rope, the next thing you do is run as fast as possible.

12:38The way he's telling the story is fun and energetic, but what they have to do is in response to something that's actually dangerous. Lamine shared a pretty terrifying story with us where a Montero was possibly killed by police in 2015 in a city called Salu, about an hour and a half away from Barcelona. Police entered the home of a Montero early one morning. The first version from the police was that a comrade jumped off his balcony. When his friends saw him, they noticed that his hands were handcuffed behind his back. And that created many demonstrations because the police version was unbelievable.

13:27There were so many more demonstrations in Salud because we were very angry. It's easy to forget that there's an actual danger to these situations of quasi-personhood or, I don't know, quasi-citizenship that the law can create. Did the protests actually change anything for the Monteros? To be honest, I'm not sure it changed anything on a systemic level. But the one really big thing that came out of these demonstrations is that the Monteros recognized their own power to organize themselves. Meaning they were sick of being excluded from the labor market and the social systems, all because the law made it hard for them to work.

14:08We didn't have a voice. Nobody cared about our situation. And nobody knew it either, because you only heard the police's voice, the media's voice, the politician's voice. And these three voices didn't speak well about us.

14:27That is what encouraged us to start this union. And this union, it represents... The union is an organization of people, mostly from Senegal, who have been sailing on the street for a long time.

14:46And at the end of 2015, they formed the union. They are not a legal union. They are actually listed as a people's association, but they just organize themselves in order to fight for the right to work, so they function as a union. It's like recognizing the language that a system has, right? even though you're not officially allowed into that system, you can start changing things. Yes, they use the language for their own purpose. It's almost like they didn't wait for permission in the best possible sense.

15:18That's why when we founded the union, we started giving talks at universities, schools, and events with activists. We were invited to many places. And as the union became more recognizable, They decided that they didn't want to be known for selling other brands' products. They were going to launch their own brand. After the break, Lamine and other Monteros collectively push all the way back against the system, taking what they learned from street vending and adding a whole new set of tools.

16:02We were enraged. We had a desire to launch this brand, to have our own products. It was also a challenge to show society that the person you see on the street doesn't just know how to sell and run away from the police.

16:18We wanted to show that we can participate in the development of society. We're capable of doing big things. They took their 200 or 300 euros that they collected among themselves and they invested in marketing their first product. It was a t-shirt with a logo on it.

16:44With the money we had from the union, we bought 15 t-shirts. And they told the media that they were starting a brand.

16:55We told an artist comrade here how we wanted our logo, what characteristics it had to have. We got many drafts, and finally, we chose a logo that represents us. We've always said that the brand's logo must be something that represents us. That's why we chose a boat and a blanket. The logo sits in the center of the t-shirt, and at a glance, it's simple. two curved rectangles forming the image of a floating piece of cloth that almost looks like it's being set on the ground. But the shapes also form the outline of a boat, a part of their migration story. And now they had their first product ready, these shirts with a distinct logo on it, and they were ready to introduce themselves to the world.

17:47So how did they do that? Well, there was an event in town by a group of Brazilian artists who were showcasing work they'd done on street-side clothing vendors in Brazil. and they'd ask some members of the Barcelona Monteros Union to come as guests. The union members, who are now the creators of this brand, Top Manta, had made 15 shirts so far and they knew there would be media at the event. Ten core members showed up wearing their Top Manta gear. I asked him how much they sold the shirts for. Ten euros and we sold all five shirts for ten euros each. Each of the five shirts that they weren't wearing were sold immediately.

18:28And that's how the brand was unofficially introduced to the Barcelona scene. Tapmanta was now in business.

18:37Because here, they called us Tapmanta as a way of putting us down.

18:45And we chose the very same name used to put down on us to give it worth. The brilliance of all this is that by starting this unofficial union and this rebellious brand, they figured out a method to get some of their fellow monteros a very official way to stay in the country. So we looked into this, and the requirements for gaining legal status are pretty stringent, especially if you're a refugee and it's hard to get a sponsor to help you do all this. But if you have a team of friends who now run a company together, well, it's like now there's a path. The brand was strong at that moment, but they still continued to face some obstacles on the way.

19:27It was all obstacles. So far, everything we wanted to do and that we want to do, it's not the same for us people from here. They go and do it, and that's it. It's very difficult because social racism continues. The obstacles remain, and we are seen as foreigners. It's tough to get hard statistics because the Spanish census does not ask questions about race and ethnicity, but Black people are underrepresented in government. And a 2017 story in El Pais interviewed people of African descent and pointed to discriminatory comments they had heard throughout their careers, as well as negative stereotypes in the representation of Black people in media and advertising.

20:07I think that Barcelona has a racial diversity problem. I think that on the one hand, it's an amazing, tolerant place that people can just be and do their thing. But I think that it's not really as integrated and diverse as it could be. While they were working on getting past these obstacles, something else was happening. COVID-19. So instead of prioritizing the brand, the Monteros shifted their focus, emptied out their shop, and started making free PPE for health care workers.

20:52It was the people chased on the streets, who got their arms broken, who were fined, who were sent to prison. These people risked their lives and decided to participate in this situation.

21:08It was a terrible, frightening situation, wasn't it? And at that very moment, we started manufacturing gowns and masks. We were able to manufacture more than 14 ,000 items during the lockdown. We distributed that to hospitals, nursing homes, and also private individuals free of charge. This incredibly important work at the peak of a global pandemic was just their beginning. Their next step, and maybe their biggest as a brand, was to create a collection. And in the spirit of collaboration, they invited world-renowned artists to make exclusive edition vintage denim jackets through a program they called Loteria Mantera.

21:50And one of those collaborators was Marina, that Brazilian artist. We all were, you know, mingling a little bit and introducing ourselves to each other. and we were going there to collect our jackets. They were beautiful denim vintage or, you know, I don't know if vintage is the right name because vintage is supposedly 25 years old, but they were just these beautiful garments that we were going to customize. And the guys came out and they were, you know, they were greeting us there and everything. And then they started to invite everyone to sit down and they started to tell us their story. I just remember listening deeply and listening to their story and just really feeling full of emotion.

22:45And that emotion, it inspired the design she put on that jacket. On my jacket, I wrote, no one is illegal, which is one of the messages that they often use in the apparel that they make. And it goes back to that Declaration of Universal Rights concept that, you know, freedom of movement, everyone has the right to this and nobody, no one person is illegal. And Topmanta had a bigger vision than just growing a brand for the sake of making more money. The goal was always to improve the street vendors' living conditions as a community and take people out of the streets and help regularise their situations by providing visas and offering them jobs.

23:32And yeah, each unique jacket that was created was for that process. This collection was one of many things that signified Tom Manta's growth as a company. And before that, they had also created a crowdfunding campaign that would help them expand the brand.

23:54That's what allowed more than 2 ,500 people to participate in the crowdfunding. This allowed us to buy more clothes, to buy screen printing machines and start to print our garments.

24:10The brand also opened a top mantel store on Don Roge Street in the Raval neighborhood of Barcelona. Raval is in downtown Barcelona, next to the ancient city. It's a place where trendy, cool shops are and some tourists as well. But the most important thing is that plenty of immigrants are living there. So there's like, I would say, a cool mix of everything. today top monta sells ethically and sustainably made clothes bags and shoes for example the andedem line which means walking together in wolof which is senegal's national language and monteros are now being plugged into the fashion world for example top monta top model was formed after fashion companies said they were having trouble finding black models and it now connects Monteros with modeling gigs.

25:08The media was looking for us to do stories and asked us to do reports. And they were no small media. It was the BBC, Algecira, many large media organizations. Even media from Portugal, Italy, many came to do a report.

25:27because everything we do, everything we have achieved, all the successes we've achieved, it's not just because of our work. Behind our work, there are many conscious people who have shared their privilege with us, who share our pain, the situation in which we lived in, so that we're able to work and change things.

25:52and to be able to change things. So, Top Manta is now succeeding by traditional standards, but that doesn't mean that they are necessarily accepted by everyone. For example, we were talking to some African guys, and they were saying that they don't feel like Top Manta represents them, because Top Manta is selling close to rich people, and they are not rich people. It's interesting because it brings up the question of belonging again. Some of the people in the immigrant community you spoke to might feel excluded because they aren't able to buy these goods. In a way, Top Manta is navigating another version of that classic streetwear challenge of becoming inaccessible.

26:29I think leaving your hometown makes you drift forever, in a way. Because once you have the experience of living, it doesn't even have to be abroad. You can just move from your city, but you dig up your roots. As peoples, we were never meant to travel. There is a grief in leaving home. There is always a difficult process in leaving your roots behind.

27:10I'm working hard not to cry.

27:16It's hard.

27:21They have a hard life.

27:25But they're so brave as well.

27:35I really admire them.

27:44working with top mantel consolidated my thoughts on belonging because

27:55I just realized that we don't belong anywhere we belong to ourselves

28:13We want the young people who arrive here, or people born here, those who go to school, to college, to have a black role model, an example from their community, where they can get help overcoming the obstacles they encounter here, the social racism they suffer.

28:32Racism that comes from teachers, from the school principals who always tell them that this is not their place and that they're not going to live their lives here, that has to stop. Right now, for a lot of people, we are a reference.

28:52As a Barcelonian, it makes me really proud to watch how Tom Manta has pushed back against oppression that they face when they're selling on the street. I mean, they made it, and they opened the door for so many other people. So I ask Lamine, how does it feel when he sees someone passing by on the street wearing Tom Manta sneakers?

29:14I feel a lot, because I think I was always told that I couldn't. You're a nobody. You don't know anything. And I prove that I can. I do have the wisdom, and I can do it.

29:42Farflung is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom of Magnificent Noise for TED. Our producers for this episode are Huete Gitana, Salim Reshambwala, Mark Sanchek, and Cesar Pesquera. Production support in Barcelona by Alain Ruiz Terol and Laura Grazioli. Our production staff includes Elis Blenar-Hassett, Sabrina Farhi, Huete Gaetana, Ben Ben Chang, Sammy Case, Jimmy Gutierrez, and Michelle Quint. With the guidance of Roxanne Highlash and Colin Helms. Our fact checkers are Nicole Bodie and Christian Aparta. voiceover by Jeremy House ad stories are produced by Transmitter Media this episode was mixed and sound designed by Kristen Miller our executive producer is Eric Newsom I'm Salim Rushamwala