The transformative impact of Catalunya Freestyle
/ Photographs: @saul.lens
Just 2 years ago, in December 2022, Periphery Gold Battle wins the Lluís Carulla Award for best idea. The entity, born from the collective work of Gold Battle, Raplegats and Llobregat Block Party, proposes to use rap in Catalan as a tool for social transformation with the aim of increasing the cultural participation of young people. Since then, with the encouragement and support of the Carulla Foundation, the project has grown significantly. So much so that, at the beginning of this year, it launched what is perhaps its most ambitious initiative: Catalunya Freestyle, the first impromptu rap competition in Catalan in history. The idea is a tournament of battles of freestyle in Catalan on a national scale, with qualifying tests throughout Catalonia and a grand finale with a single winner. The goal? Building the foundations of a stable community of rappers and glossators in Catalan.
The starting point for the project is the presentation ceremony at Fabra and Coats, held in February this year. With 100 participants and nearly 1,500 in-person attendees, the proposal seems to have very high potential. The data that have been obtained since then confirm this assumption. Catalunya Freestyle has done 8 shows throughout the territory with a total of 7,750 attendees. The most outstanding event, at the Festes de la Mercè in Barcelona, managed to attract up to 3,000 people. In terms of digital presence, Catalunya Freestyle’s Instagram account exceeds those 9,900 followers. “Although, when we started, the demand was not so obvious, we have discovered that there really was a lot”, says Albert Alarcón, one of the main promoters of the project. “We have filled a voidthere really is no similar project, although the battles have been around for a long time”. However, while all this demonstrates the success of the initiative, its true impact cannot be seen solely in numbers.
“We thought that the winners of the qualifiers would only be people who were already on the radar, but that’s not the case.” Alarcón says that, with the project, one is being created visibility platform for new artists: Catalunya Freestyle is the push that many young people needed to jump into the competition and show their talent. Thus, the initiative contributes to the impetus of cultural participation among young people, not only offering a voice to emerging artists, but also providing new spaces to that public which, although it was already interested in improvised rap in Spanish, had difficulty find in Catalan.
The project has a very significant impact on the use of Catalan, since, until now, many glossers found it difficult to find spaces to improvise in their mother tongue. But the scope of the proposal does not stop there. Alarcón considers that the success of the project “is helping to break down prejudices, such as the idea that Catalan would not be able to generate a powerful circuit, or that there would not be enough level”. The reality is that Catalunya Freestyle has the strength to attract people of very diverse profiles, even those who do not speak Catalan at home. The foundation of a movement that continues to grow is being created.
Alarcón, however, affirms that there are aspects of the project’s impact that must continue to be worked on. For example, increasing female participation is still an important challenge. Although there is some equality in the public, the presence of women on stage remains a minority. Faced with this situation, Catalunya Freestyle proposes to continue acting to generate female references on the scene and, thus, encourage female improvisers to participate. “It is a pending subject, although, over the last few years, it has already improved a lot”.
Despite the success of the proposal, Alarcón expresses that they are facing the uncertainty that marks every cultural project today. For now, Catalunya Freestyle can stand on its own, but, without the funding from the Administration, it is not known how many years it will be able to continue doing so: “we are afraid of hitting the ceiling”. The point, however, is that Catalunya Freestyle is already transforming the world of Catalan rap. In just a few months, the proposal has captured the attention of a considerable audience and it seems that interest in the project will only grow. “The intention is to continue forward, to expand the project, to do more and better seasons; we see a lot of future for him”, says Alarcón. It follows from all that Catalonia is fertile ground for the creation of an indigenous improvised rap scene and Catalunya Freestyle can be the seed.
