Barcelona, Spain – Volunteers from across the world have come together in the main hall of one of Spain’s oldest labour unions, the UGT – once a registration centre for international volunteers who came to Spain to fight fascism during the Spanish Civil War.
Now it has trained the nonviolent international volunteers – Palestine supporters, activists, journalists and politicians – who will sail on the Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza on Sunday.
“We are not heroes. We are not the story. The story is the people of Gaza,” organiser Thiago Avila, a lifelong activist for Palestine and environmental justice, told the crowds gathered for a news conference before the ships set sail.
Their goal is to deliver humanitarian aid, which is the flotilla’s only cargo, and open a humanitarian corridor for Palestinians facing being starved and killed by Israel.
In less than two years of war, Israel has killed more than 63,000 Palestinians with tens of thousands more injured and missing.
Sailing into the uncertain
About 26,000 applications from people around the world came in and were whittled down to the hundreds who will be on board the roughly 100 flotilla boats.
The flotilla will start in Barcelona and head to Tunisia, where it will be joined by more vessels on Thursday.
Once out again on the Mediterranean Sea, it will converge with more boats leaving Italy and other undisclosed ports, and together they will sail in formation to the Gaza Strip.
Organisers know time is against them as Israel kills Palestinians daily, not only using air strikes and ground forces but also a man-made famine that it has imposed.
Since 2010, all freedom flotillas to Gaza have been intercepted or attacked by Israeli forces.
In June, the ship Madleen was illegally intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters about 185km (115 miles) west of Gaza, where Israel has no authority. Its crew, which included climate activist Greta Thunberg, were detained or expelled.
In 2010, the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, made up of six ships carrying humanitarian aid and more than 600 passengers, was raided by Israeli commandos in Mediterranean waters.
The commandos killed 10 activists and wounded dozens.
Other attempts were blocked by Israel in 2011, 2015, 2018 and multiple attempts in 2025, including the Conscience, which was struck twice by drones 25km (14 nautical miles) off Malta.
An earlier attempt over land, called the Global March to Gaza, set out in June to deliver aid to Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt.
Many of those volunteers have regrouped in Tunisia to gather ships to join the Global Sumud Flotilla.
Determined volunteers
The Barcelona gathering reflected a wide international presence, including delegations from Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland and the United States.
The volunteers, some veterans of multiple flotillas, are focused on their collective purpose: to break Israel’s siege of Gaza and deliver aid to its people.
Training sessions in Barcelona were intense, designed to prepare participants for scenarios such as interception in international waters, arrest, imprisonment, deportation, violent assault or bureaucratic strategies to halt the departure of boats.
But the foundation of their preparation is maintaining nonviolence in any of these scenarios, something the organisers highlighted several times and warned that breaking from that principle would not be accepted.
Every volunteer has signed a strict code of conduct, committing to peaceful resistance and rejecting systems of oppression and exploitation throughout the mission.
Workshops also revisited the history of nonviolent struggle – from Mahatma Gandhi’s leadership in India’s independence movement to Rosa Parks’s defiance against racial segregation in the United States.
Among the participants was Luna Valentina, a 24-year-old Colombian volunteer. She is married to a Palestinian refugee and has lived in exile herself after being targeted in Colombia for her activism during mass protests against right-wing former President Ivan Duque.
The couple live in Jordan after facing racism in Europe as they tried to find somewhere to settle, she told Al Jazeera.
During the Global March to Gaza, Valentina joined other Colombians on the way to Rafah. She recalled the solidarity, strength and care she found among fellow Colombian female activists, some of whom will set sail with her now, and others who will support the mission from land.
Getting ready to set sail
On Friday, a three-day celebration of the volunteers and their mission began on Moll de la Fusta, a port walkway in Barcelona, as the countdown began for their departure.
It was a warm outpouring of support as sounds of drums filled the air, hundreds of Palestinian flags fluttered and crowds gathered for a festival of music, culture and art to show support for Palestinians in Gaza and for the volunteers of the flotilla.
What everyone is hoping for is that the ships will arrive on the coast of besieged Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid that Israel has blocked from entering.
For Avila, the father of a newborn, this flotilla continues a legacy: “I love my daughter so much, as the mothers and fathers in Gaza, and because of this love, … we cannot leave a world like this. We have to change the society that enables a genocide to happen,” he told Al Jazeera.
“I believe that anyone that is not dead inside dies a little bit with every child in Gaza that dies,” he added.
That sentiment was shared by an Australian mother of four who has also joined the flotilla. Her voice broke as she said: “No one should live and die like this. Everyone deserves the same dignity and freedom.”
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