Archivos negros / Black Archives

<p>What does it mean to build an archive from fragments? <em>Black Archives</em>, a three-part series published on L’Internationale Online from February 2025 to April 2026, begins from this critical question and refuses to let it go. Written by Tania Safura Adam (curator, founder-editor of Radio Africa and conceptual architect of the research platform ‘España Negra’), the series traverses battlefields, music halls and diaspora communities, while following a single line of enquiry: How has Black life in Spain been rendered invisible, and what forms of knowledge, solidarity and political consciousness have persisted despite that invisibility?</p> <p>This unprecedented research by Safura Adam delves into the history and legacy of Pan-Africanism in Spain through the twentieth century, with resonances into the present. The series emerged in dialogue with the research and exhibition project ‘Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica’ (Art Institute of Chicago, MACBA, Barcelona, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 2025-26) curated by Elvira Dyangani Ose, Antawan I. Byrd and Matthew S. Witkovsky and Adom Getachew. Dyangani Ose’s foreword opens this publication. In the MACBA iteration of the exhibition, Safura Adam featured a substantial archival display of her investigation, ‘España Negra’, which places the history of Pan-Africanism within the specific context of Spain and Catalonia, as part of the broader archival approach of Black Radical Marxists against Fascism showcased in the exhibition.</p>