Protest with a minute of silence for the murder of two young Pakistanis, on May 22, 2022, in Terrasa.
At the age of five, she didn't understand anything about life, but she already knew that the 25-year-old boy her parents had chosen was going to be her husband. Whether I wanted to or not. Pilar, the fictitious name chosen by this woman born in Gambia 44 years ago, was crushed with imposition throughout her childhood and adolescence and at age 17, seeing that time was running out, she rebelled. "Don't marry, I don't know you, I can't love you," she told her future husband. No one paid attention to him. The ceremony was held the following Wednesday in a village in Gambia. On their wedding night, two men forced her to sleep with her husband. "It was rape, from that day I see him as a demon," she recalls almost 30 years later. Pilar arrived in Spain hand in hand with that man with whom she ended up having two children, the result of rapes, and was with him until the mid-2000s when she stood in a court from which she did not leave until she managed to process her divorce.
The decision to separate forced Pilar to isolate herself from the African community of Zaragoza, which rejected her as if she were a stinker. She had to move neighborhoods and it took years to hug her mother and forgive her. "She tried to justify herself, saying that it was not her, but my grandfather, whom she was afraid of. She knew what had been done to me was wrong, I told her I forgave her. I don't hold a grudge against him anymore," he admits.
More informationThe murder in Pakistan of the two young women from Terrassa brings to light other possible forced marriages in Catalonia
The phenomenon of forced and arranged marriages is almost invisible, countless, but, according to studies on the subject, it is still present in the diasporas of countries such as China, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, Morocco, Senegal, Gambia or Niger. Also in some groups of gypsy ethnicity. Pilar created a precedent that today many young women claim, a new generation of women who begin to rebel against their families and the tradition of imposed marriages.
Arabiatu, the fictitious name of a 26-year-old Spanish woman of Gambian origin, was the last of her family to marry by obligation. "We are six brothers, three girls and three boys and thanks to what happened to me, this is not going to happen to my sisters. My parents have opened their eyes," he explains at the headquarters of AFRICagua, an NGO with a presence in Zaragoza that works with people of sub-Saharan origin.
Arabiatu's parents arranged a trip to Gambia when she turned 12 and there told her that there was a man who was interested in her. He was the imam of the community, 20 years her senior. "They asked me if I liked it. I, at that time said yes, but I was not aware of what it entailed, "he recalls. Arabiatu, who wears a black veil covering her head and neck, has made an effort to unearth her story, which has taken years to overcome. He says that that trip made his commitment official, with no turning back. Her relatives tried to convince her that once married she would learn to love her husband, which was the case with the women in her family. "Growing up, when I was 14 or 15, I told them no, I didn't want it, but it was too late."
Saying no, the young woman explains as she crosses her hands painted with henna flowers, meant bringing shame to the family, because the father had already given his word. At the age of 17 he celebrated his wedding during a new trip to Gambia. "I was bad because for me it wasn't a wedding, I was sad, with people I barely knew," she recalls. Arabiatu was "lucky" that her husband had another wife in France, where he spent most of his time, and the distance helped him endure his marriage and secretly take contraceptives. She never loved him, as she had been led to believe, but when she accepted that she had no other way out, she said to herself: "If I'm going to be here, I'm going to have children, because I want to be a mom." But after giving birth to the second baby, the bills to be paid piled up, she continued to live in her parents' house and the young woman could not bear to continue with an absent husband who did not cover the expenses. It was so that he decided to ask for a divorce and justify it to his environment and the community.
"Families usually oppose divorce to preserve the respect and honorability of the father, who gave the floor, also of the brothers and mothers," says Juan David Gómez, professor of Psychology and Sociology at the University of Zaragoza. The sociologist elaborated together with Margarita Castilla and Laura Cosculluela the study Between obedience and rebellion: the arranged marriages of women of Senegalese origin in Spain. In their interviews with 19 women, aged between 18 and 40, they found many who said they fought, that they created conflict so they could separate, but that, in the end, the families ended up understanding. This is what happened in the case of Arabiatu: "It was my parents who supported me to get divorced. My mother told me that she was very sorry, that they didn't know what they were getting me into, that they regretted it and that if I wanted to divorce, they were there to lend me a hand."
Rebellion and taboo
Arabiatu claims that only young women can challenge tradition. "Our mothers, no matter how much you tell them, have grown up elsewhere and although they are in Spain, they still have a mentality very opposite to ours," he explains. Professor Gómez indicates that women who have grown up in Spain manage to detach themselves more easily from traditions inherited in their parents' countries. "Young women make decisions more independently, they have gone to 8M demonstrations, they have assumed the discourse of empowerment and families no longer have so many tools to pressure them," she explains. "Arranged marriages seem unacceptable to them," describes the sociologist.
But the rebellion of the new generations is still a taboo subject in some communities and, in certain cases, dangerous. The last known episode that revealed the difficulty of women to face their families was that of two Pakistani sisters from Barcelona, aged 21 and 24, who rebelled against their father's insistence that they maintain marriages with their cousins. The investigation of the Prosecutor's Office reveals a year later that the young women traveled to Pakistan deceived by the family, who pressured them to return to Spain accompanied by their husbands and refused. The bravery ended in a double murder in Pakistan at the hands of a brother and uncle.
The boundary between arranged marriages, which have the alleged consent of the spouses, and forced marriages, involving coercion, intimidation and violence, is actually very tenuous. "When there are vulnerabilities it is no longer a free situation, but it is very difficult to determine where the arranged marriage ends and the forced one begins," describes Beatriz Lázaro, responsible for the project I do not accept, study and visibility of forced marriages in Spain, carried out by the Federation of Progressive Women.
In any case, the imposition is not religious, but cultural. It is agreed between families and is understood as a form of protection, safety and maintenance of daughters. Forcing someone to marry has been a crime in Spain since 2015 and is punishable by sentences of between six months and three years.
"There may still be more cases," Arabiatu concedes, "but in the future, now that we are the mothers, things will start to change." She and Pilar remarried after their divorces. This time for love.
This report has been published as part of the project "re:framing Migrants in European Media", supported by the European Commission. The project is coordinated by the European Cultural Foundation.
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