Haunting the black Mediterranean: Black, African and Afro-descendant women’s everyday lives in Spain

Samantha Nyakundi

Photograph by the author, Samantha Nyakundi. Costa del Sol, Spain, 2024

Black, African and Afro-descendant communities* have been part of the Iberian Peninsula’s social history for centuries. Yet these histories remain largely absent from dominant narratives of Spanish nation-building, where Blackness is still often understood as external to the nation rather than as part of its longer history.

I arrived in Spain as a Kenyan student at a private university, entering the country through a pathway of mobility shaped by education and institutional support. My own experience of moving to Spain made me interested in the different ways migration is lived and understood, particularly beyond the idea of migration as movement from one place to another. Through this research I became interested in how black women navigate belonging and identity within Spain, and how they create networks of support in a society where black histories and presence have been historically marginalised. 

My entry into these questions began through the communities I encountered after arriving in Madrid. Many of the first spaces I became connected to were organised by African-American communities and other members of the wider African diaspora. These spaces offered familiarity in a new environment and prompted me to ask where other African migrants gathered, how their experiences differed, and how different migration histories shaped diasporic life.

By the time I began fieldwork, I had spent months moving through different parts of Spain and familiarising myself with the places where African and Afro-descendant communities gathered. Many of the relationships that shaped this research emerged through these everyday encounters where different migration stories converged around shared experiences of navigating life as a racialised person in Spain. We often gathered in parks or over shared dinners in neighbourhoods such as Lavapies, exchanged housing information and job opportunities through Whatsapp groups. Across these cultural and community spaces, many of the women I met described similar experiences of being followed around in stores, being questioned by the police, the lack of opportunities for social mobility in the workplace or the repeated treatment as outsiders regardless of their personal histories with Spain. Some had lived in the country for decades, while others even had Spanish citizenship, yet questions about their origins remained a persistent reminder that their blackness was still often perceived as incompatible with Spanishness.

While public debate surrounding migration in Spain has become increasingly visible in recent years, particularly as Mediterranean crossings have intensified and European border regimes have become increasingly militarised, the everyday experiences of black migrant women remain far less visible. Around 497,000 immigrant women arrived in Spain between 2017 and 2023, yet these figures often reveal very little about the uncertainty of life after arrival, including prolonged waits for asylum decisions or limited employment opportunities that delay one’s ability to become financially independent and support family members left behind.

While migration in Spain still remains contested and the far-right Vox party continues to target African migrants through anti-immigration rhetoric , the Pedro Sanchez government has expanded partnerships with African governments, signaling greater recognition of Spain’s ties to Africa. At the same time, the continued relative absence of black Spain from both Spanish historiography and migration scholarship raises a broader set of questions. Scholars such as SA Smythe and Allessanra Di Miao have proposed thinking through the idea of the black Mediterranean, a framework which understands the region as historically shaped through slavery, colonialism, (post) colonial migration and centuries of exchange, through which Africa and Europe have been mutually constituted. 

Across Spain, black and Afro-descendent activists have played an important role in creating spaces where black histories are made visible and are celebrated. One such space is Centro Cultura Espacio Afro in Madrid, a cultural venue that is focused on the inclusion of African and Afro-descendant people, bringing individuals together for Pan-African book readings and workshops. Walking into the space in Arganzuela, you are surrounded by shelves filled with African literature and works by black authors, alongside art and objects that bring African and Afro-diasporic histories into view. 

Similar forms of cultural production are evident in the work of Afro-Spanish cultural organisers who have created spaces for the circulation of Pan-African knowledge and community building. In Valencia, the Pan-African bookstore United Minds founded by Deborah Ekoka hosts activities such as reading groups and workshops on Afro-diasporic history, equipping black and Afro-diasporic communities in Spain with access to books and resources that are difficult to find elsewhere in Spain.

Alongside these physical cultural spaces, similar forms of knowledge exchange and community-building  have also developed through digital spaces such as Las Morenas de España, Afroféminas, Melanin Madrid, and other groups such as Queer Racializadas Madrid, which have expanded the ways in which black and racialised communities in Spain maintain connections and organise across different cities. These initiatives continue a longer history of black migrant women’s organising in Spain, as seen through the work of Equatorial Guinean writer and feminist activist Remei Sipi Mayo, whose writing and community organising have helped create political and cultural spaces for African and Afro-descendant women in Spain for the past thirty years. 

The work of women such as Deborah Ekoka and Remei Mayo invite us to move beyond abstract discussions of borders and migration toward the everyday realities of being black in Spain. Attending to these also reframes how we understand the black Mediterranean: as a space where collective futures are continually being imagined through spaces such as Espacio Afro and United Minds, as well as the everyday practices through which black communities in Spain sustain themselves and build forms of belonging across borders. 

*Throughout this article, I use the terms black, African and Afro-descendant broadly to refer to people of diverse ethnic and national backgrounds who self-identify with these categories, or have African ancestry. While these identities are neither fixed nor interchangeable, they reflect the ways people that I interacted with described themselves and acknowledge the diversity of black communities in Spain.

Samantha Nyakundi 

Samantha is a para-disciplinary writer, educator, and researcher whose work engages black life and its afterlives, with a particular interest in black geographies, tracing how the black Mediterranean operates as an aqueous frontier of displacement and racial ordering. They are an alum of the IE School of Global and Public Affairs in Madrid and have previously been a research fellow at the Centre for Arts, Design and Social Research.