Humanitarian efforts bring more Ukrainian refugees to Catalonia

Catalonia is continuing in its efforts to offer humanitarian assistance to refugees from Ukraine. 

A chartered flight organized by the migrant rescue organization Open Arms and sister Lucía Caram will bring 200 refugees from Poland to Catalonia on Saturday. The humanitarian crisis in Ukraine requires "swift action because the despair of the people cannot wait," Caram said. 

About seventy will stay in Manresa, where accommodation is being sought for the newcomers, and the rest will stay in other parts of Catalonia and also in Madrid. 

The Santa Clara Convent Foundation has already welcomed the first of the refugees from Ukraine, such as Irina, a mother with two children who had to leave her husband there. “I never would have imagined that life could be broken so quickly,” she said, painfully.

In Ukraine, she worked as a hairdresser and says she and her husband, who was a builder, "had a good life." The war, however, took them by surprise and she is now in Manresa with her two children. 

Sister Lucía Caram and the Santa Clara Convent Foundation have a lot of experience in welcoming people fleeing war. The conflict in Ukraine, however, has forced them to push the accelerator button like never before. 

"It's a terrible escape, when you go to the border and see the floods of people, you see that we have to wake up because despair can't wait," Caram said, adding that “people are fleeing terror, fleeing bullets, and fleeing what war means."

Children’s activities in Guissona

The Guissona library has started new activities for children who have recently arrived from Ukraine. 

Guissona is a small town in western Catalonia with a population of roughly 7,500, more than a thousand of whom are Ukrainian. Through a network structure of 43 families, the town has welcomed 95 refugees since the war broke out and is readying itself for more. Of the 95 who have arrived, 42 are children, mostly aged between 3-6 years old. 

Through this initiative, they can spend the mornings in the library so as not to spend so many hours at home. In the afternoons, other leisure and sports activities will be organized, such as table tennis, football, and dance classes. 

The local library is offering playful activities, organized by the council and volunteers while waiting to see how the newly arrived children can go to school. 

Mayor Jaume Ars explained that once schooled, the two offers could be "merged". He also said that they will organize activities for adult refugees that will include, among other things, psychological support.

The mayor stressed that these activities are intended to "complement" other support structures and in no case take prominence.

Jaume Ars also wanted to emphasize that doing all this "excites" them but at the same time also "distresses" them a lot. Especially because a "mass arrival" of refugees is expected on Saturday and it remains to be seen how their arrival is organized. 

Around 60 Ukrainians linked to the town either through relatives or friends will arrive by plane to Barcelona. Guissona currently has the capacity to welcome 160 refugees and counts on a hundred volunteers to take care of them.