In 1996 Celtas Cortos was enjoying great success. In 1991 the group from Valladolid had published the album that was sung at many parties in Spain, Tell me a story (where the song is included April 20th) and the following years they did not stop performing, gaining more and more followers in their recitals. Always aware of the Palestinian cause, the group performed a concert in Béjar (Salamanca) on the 1996 tour with the aim of allocating all proceeds to the construction of a school in one of the most important cities in the Gaza Strip.
The recital was held at the Béjar Sports Center. “It was packed and had a great atmosphere. I seem to remember that tickets cost 1,000 pesetas and about 2,000 spectators attended. Nobody got paid. “Everything went to the school,” Eduardo Pérez, manager of Short Celts.
For three decades, the nursery school financed by Celtas Cortos has welcomed 90 boys and girls each year in its three classrooms. According to the group, that school was bombed this week by the Israeli army. “He has contacted us Amin (not his fictitious name to avoid reprisals), father of one of the children who studied at that school, and told us what happened. It is devastating and unfortunately a very common reality in recent months,” Jesús Cifuentes, singer of Celtas Cortos, comments by phone. Amin, a Palestinian, trained academically in Salamanca, was at that Béjar concert and then returned to his land, where he lives today.
Among the messages he sends, he reports that his son (34 years old), who learned to read and write in those classrooms, has died during the conflict. “At 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, 01-31-2024, the Israeli army murdered my son in cold blood, who was helping the evacuated Palestinians. For me he is a hero, altruistic, brave and a real man. It is a great shame, but with patience I will overcome this irreparable loss. I will be in charge of taking care of his six children. I ask God to give me a lot of strength to accomplish this task,” the message reads. “We are being eyewitnesses of a genocide. It is a horror. Almost the entire political environment is looking the other way while Palestinians die daily,” denounces Cifuentes.
Carlos Rodríguez worked in the organization of that concert and with his association was the one who made the request to build the school: “The Celtas even gave up the copyright of the songs they played that night. We raised 600,000 pesetas and it was a wonderful night. Then we went to Gaza to manage the construction and were even welcomed by Arafat. We told him everything and he thought it was great.” Rodríguez points out that he saw images of the area before the war: “It had improved a lot since the construction of the school. It was beautiful, similar to any European city. But now they have devastated it to biblical levels.”
According to Unicef sources operating in Palestine, “more than 87% of school buildings in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed. All schools remain closed for 625,000 students for the past six months. “All the universities in Gaza have been destroyed.”
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