They are a familiar sight on the streets and sandy beach of Barcelona: vendors, blankets spread out in front of them, selling copies of branded shoes, handbags and football shirts to frequently disinterested passers-by. Now Catalonia and the Balearic Islands have chosen Top Manta, a Barcelona-based cooperative representing the mostly migrant, undocumented sellers, as inspiration for its entry to the Venice Biennale on architecture, which opened last weekend.
Top Manta is named after the vendors (manteros) who spread their wares on a blanket (manta). “It was established in 2015 after a period of intense police repression to support people who, because of the law, can’t find a place to live or open a bank account and are forced to live in the street,” says Lamine Sarr, a manteros spokesperson who, like many Top Manta members, is from Senegal.
The theme for this year’s biennale is The Laboratory of the Future, with Africa as its focus. The Ramon Llull Institute, a Catalan cultural organisation that organises the region’s participation in the biennale, ran a contest, and the architectural practice Leve Productora won with an entry called Following the Fish.
Leve’s Daniel Cid says: “We asked, ‘Where do we have a laboratory of the future in Barcelona?’ We thought: Top Manta. Let’s make a project with them that will make us rethink architecture from the perspective of an African immigrant.”
Sarr adds: “The fish symbolises that the people in Top Manta aren’t here because they come from poor countries but because their countries have been exploited and colonised for centuries. Fishing by large boats has made it impossible for local fishermen to survive. We decided to choose the fish because it’s symbolic of not only the exploitation of the sea but of all natural resources.”
The stand in Venice is in two parts. The first, a mantero market, depicts the journey of the African diaspora, the hardships of the migration process, the border policies and discriminatory laws of Europe. The second, a reparation workshop, comes from a collaborative process between Leve and architecture students from 26 countries working on new housing models, based on repurposing empty shops and buildings.
Cid says the idea is to bring African values of sustainability and communality into the conversation about how we live.
It is a learning process, says his colleague Eva Serrats, to see a community created out of necessity. “The proposal, from an architectural point of view, is knowing how to live. For example, they have a lot more experience of cooperative living than we do, of communal spaces and communal eating – which doesn’t have to imply poverty – and of using one space to do many things, which also brings life to the street.”
Cid adds: “We have also been able to demonstrate that this way of living has a much smaller environmental impact.”
In Spain, there is, as yet, no US-style “green card” amnesty offered to undocumented migrants. Last week, Sarr presented the Spanish government with a petition signed by more than 600,000 people calling for the regularisation of the country’s estimated half a million stateless citizens.
Last month, the Italian government, led by the far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, declared a state of emergency over the arrival of migrants crossing the Mediterranean. According to government figures, 31,292 migrants arrived into Italy that way between January and April, four times the number in 2022.
Some will question the ethics of giving manteros such a prominent platform at the biennale, given that, before Top Manta started producing its own T-shirts and trainers, it sold cheap copies of branded shoes and bags, effectively in breach of copyright.
This misses the point, says Cid, that they have been forced into marginal activity to survive. “There’s a food crisis in Senegal that is caused by western interests. Europe exploits them, Europe creates hunger, and when they arrive in Europe they face racist laws that make it impossible for them to work.
“The question isn’t what they have to do to survive, but why we allow such conditions to exist.”
Under Spanish law, to obtain legal residency, non-EU immigrants must live in the country for three years, prove they have had a fixed address for at least a year, show they are learning the language and have a work contract for a minimum of one year. Such conditions are often impossible to meet.
Serrats says Top Manta will present Catalonia in a new light in Venice. “We want to present Catalonia and the Balearics to the world through different eyes, not through western eyes, and through people whose voice isn’t normally heard, because we believe we can learn a lot from this voice,” she says.
“Rather than be curators or narrators, we want them to tell their story.”
