I write this series editor preface from my hotel in Barcelona, Spain, just off Diagonal. I write this as several heartbreaking historical moments have come to pass – the US Supreme Court’s reversing of Roe v Wade, for example, is just one of such moments. I wonder how much is too much. How many rights we are collectively willing to lose before enough is enough, before we finally decide to collectively galvanize our energies to push forward? Barcelona is interesting. In the time I have been here I have learned much about the municipalism movement that has been making great strides against neoliberalism, particularly privatization of public goods and spaces. It is refreshing to see community activism pushing back against the big banks, corporatism, and the long arm of capitalism. At the same time, while researching white spaces at the Museo Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, it has become more than apparent that racism, while openly dismissed or reduced to class issues like many countries in across the globe, is alive and well. Most prevalent, if you pay close attention, is anti-Black racism. Black people are routinely ignored, mistreated, or excluded from place and space in Barcelona. Of course, racism is complicated by immigration, as I was reminded by one of the members of Barcelona en Comu, a communityled organization deeply involved with the municipalism movement here. While folx here are concerned with steady immigration to Barcelona and its impact on gentrification of neighborhoods and displacement of residents, immigration has also become another code word for African or Black and is often used to promote exclusionary policies against folx classified as such.

It is with these thoughts in mind that I give further reflection to racism, and specifically anti-Black racism, in Europe. I note this with some clear caveats, fully understanding the complexities of Europe and the racist histories of the many countries that make up its mass, including those not part of the EU. The legacies of the transatlantic slavery and other racial atrocities aside, many European countries would recast themselves as post-racial or at least striving for some reckoning of their past.