“The world is very big. There are continents up and down, and people like you can go from one place to another. For many like me, however, the world is very small and reduced. They never let us go where we have to go and where we need to go,” Licks Ibrahima Balde laments.
This same week has had an official response from the United Kingdom Ministry: he will not be able to travel to London to attend, who wrote jointly with the journalist, berkolar (Improviser of poems in Vasco) and voluntary activist to help immigrants Amtes Arzalluz.
The Jermyn Street theater had managed for months the author’s visa application, so that it could be present at the first presentation next Tuesday. The British government’s response, like a jug of cold water, came on Wednesday. “We have not been satisfied that it has been able to demonstrate that their circumstances are really declared, or that I intend to leave the United Kingdom after your visit,” said the note, with the usual bureaucratic and depersonalized tone in this type of communications. “Any future visa request to the United Kingdom will be taken into consideration according to its individual merits, but in your case it is very likely that it will be rejected again unless the circumstances change. There is no right to resort to this decision,” he finished.
Ibrahima was going to reside, during his stay in London, at the home of and has made the theatrical adaptation. A fascinating script turned made the author, who had spent months of her childhood in the Basque Basque Country and imposed the task, during the pandemic, to learn Basque, to give a copy of a specimen of Little brother (The first edition was in Vasco) and was seduced by the story.
Wertenbaker has written theater for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and came to receive six nominations for the Tony Awards for his work Our Country’s Good (for the good of our country). It is an institution, respected by its works of political and social content.
“We are absolutely disappointed with the decision of the Ministry of Interior,” said the direction of the Jermyn Street theater, which has claimed the Government to rethink its position. “The book [de Ibrahima] It has been a source of inspiration around the world and led him to meet with Pope Francis, ”they point out.
In their protest note, those responsible for the theater put their finger on the sore, highlighting the political aspect that implies such a scandalous decision. In its attempt to stop the electoral threat of the populist and xenophobic right of Nigel Farage, in a way that has unleashed the alarms between members of the political formation itself and between humanitarian organizations.
“The denial of a visa to a writer of such magnitude subtracts the British audience an important cultural connection. It is a decision that cannot be abstracted from the current political debate about migration and the rhetoric that surrounds it,” says the theater.
Translated into multiple languages, recommended multiple times by the late Pope Francis to understand the drama of immigration, the book tells the terrible trip of bucket (Guinea-Conakri, 31 years) in search of his missing little brother, to end up arriving in Madrid, where he works today in a mechanical workshop of truck repair.
Before he died, his father asked him to take care of his little brother, who had undertaken the trip to Libya, like thousands of Africans, with the intention of crossing the Mediterranean and arriving in Europe. He never found it, but for four years he crossed Mali, Algeria, Libya, and lived hard, almost unbearable experiences.
It was in the train station and bus of Irún, already willing to cross France, when he met the volunteer, and later friend of the soul, which would help him tell his story. Arzalluz began to prepare a dosier with the personal history of bucket, to help him prepare his asylum application. “He suffered a true ordeal during his trip. Violence and situations that can not even be counted. And he never found the brother. He was disoriented, not knowing what to do. It was impossible to return to his country. Thus ended in Europe. I met him so,” how much the Basque activist, who maintains a strong friendship with bucket, despite the fact that they now live hundreds of kilometers away.
The Guinean arrived in Spain in 2018. After a first denial of asylum, he lived four years in an irregular situation, until he obtained the “social roots”, the authorization of temporary residence due to exceptional circumstances granted by the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migrations. At the moment, breathe calm until April 2026.
Both were going to travel together to London and celebrate their success. On Wednesday, the journalist had to call his friend to tell him the bad news. The frustration on the other side of the line, he remembers, was painful. “Ibrahima has an indefinite contract in Madrid. I, like berkolar Improviser, I don’t have an indefinite contract, or any job security. I can go to London and he doesn’t. The criterion is clear, isn’t it? “, He explains.” I have the feeling that he is still lost in the desert. This time is not the African. It is the European desert of the bureaucracy, which can never leave. “
