THE OTHER SHORE
Juan Manuel Pardellas 
First, I came to Africa through music. At just 19, I saw Bob Geldof and the Live Aid festival. Soon after, I devoured every groove of Paul Simon's Graceland album and learned of Mandela's South Africa in prison. I fell in love with artists like albino Malian Salif Keita, South African Miriam Makeba, barefoot lady Cesaria Evora, Yeke Yeke's Guinean Mory Kanté, or Senegalese businessman and politician and mbalax king Yossou NDour.
En 2001, ma vie a été bouleversée. De fragiles bateaux en bois remplis de femmes, d'hommes, d'enfants et de bébés arrivaient aux îles Canaries. Certains mouraient dans moins de deux mètres d'eau. Au milieu de la nuit, ballottée par l'océan, Fatiha Nadir donne naissance à Sheima sur la patera, Tina Osazee qui survit au Nigeria en vendant des feuilles de citrouille, l'Ivoirienne Salimata Sangare aux yeux d'amande, Taylor grimpe dans la timonerie d'un énorme cargo parce qu'elle admire et veut rencontrer le footballeur Messi, El Hadj Sano et les naufragés momifiés de la Barbade, et bien d'autres encore, m'ont ouvert leur cœur au cours de mes onze années de correspondance pour El País, m'ont raconté leur vie, et leurs terribles histoires ont fait naître en moi le besoin de comprendre et de rencontrer leurs familles, de sentir les fruits mûrs, le poisson fumé et de goûter leurs merveilleuses bières dans des couchers de soleil aux mille nuances d'orange.
They inspired the reports compiled in Héroes de ébano (Premio Ernesto Salcedo, also translated into French and Wolof, Ediciones Idea), the emotive work of Finca Machinda (Canarias3puntocero Ediciones) and my latest work, En este gran mar (Gaveta Ediciones, distributed by Interleo). In Rabat I set foot on that special land for the first time and I didn't want to leave the continent.
Reverte, Kapuscinski, Sami Nair, Chimamanda, Soyinka, the chronicles of Nicolás Castellano and Xavier Aldekoa, the example of Chema Caballero, but, above all, two good friends, the legendary EFE correspondent Saliou Traore and my dear professor of Spanish literature at the Cheik Anta Diop University in Dakar, Amadou Ndoye, taught me to understand and see Africa as if my skin were darker. And so, I feel that each country I visit or set foot in for the first time welcomes me as one of its own. I have travelled through a dozen countries of the neighbouring continent and I hope to have enough life and strength to continue learning.
And in the maturity and much more serenity of my career, it was my turn to take another step. Welcome Africa was born out of a personal commitment to a new way of understanding the continent, of listening and learning. It does so from the Canary Islands, one of the most topical places on the planet due to the arrival of boats and the tragedy of the search for a better life and the many lives that are lost in the attempt. We are morally obliged to get to know our neighbours better.
The journalist and digital producer Javier Zerolo inspired and accompanies me in this adventure.
I hope that in a short time it will turn from a personal project into a global medium, in three languages, with knowledgeable voices, natives and descendants that I hope to find in Europe, Africa and America, and that every day we can count on more collaborators and sponsors to make this adventure viable. Welcome Africa is not an ngo, but a new media that comes to occupy a practically empty information space.
No clichés, no hoaxes, no fears. No good intentions or neo-colonialism. A lot of mirroring and learning. Just mutual knowledge and interest. Many positive things happen and this can be a good platform to spread it.
I look forward to your support.
Welcome to Africa.
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