Puru Remangu, feminist culture and in Asturian that crosses borders

In Asturian, 'remangu' means determination, strength, power. And that is precisely what Enar Areces, creator of the cultural and creative project Puru Remangu, which works on Asturian identity and feminism, has in excess. It started as a brand of t-shirts and other products with feminist messages in the Asturian language that grew little by little until it became a means to promote initiatives that tell the stories of those women who face life with courage. Those that have done it in the past, opening the way for the following generations and those that carry it out now thanks to those predecessors. With effort and without giving up on the road.

"A woman who had rolled up her sleeves was a woman who cleaned very well, who took care of the house, who scrubbed and swept with great art. And we, from Puru Remangu, want to give it a twist so that it is associated with being what you you want to be, so if you have rolled up you have a lot of strength," Enar Areces explained to elDiario.es via video call. "It's more than a clothing brand, it's a sign of identity," he says.

Behind the project are her, who is in charge of the creative part, and her partner Xicu, who is in charge of carrying out the most administrative part. After about eleven years away from their land, they returned a month before the pandemic began and settled in Gijón. "When I was still in Madrid I launched a T-shirt pre-sale, but at that time I didn't even have a website. Also, I worked in an advertising agency many hours a day and I didn't have the energy to create a brand either. I knew how to do it because it's my job , but I only made a post on social networks every two months and sold a t-shirt," says Areces.

Currently, they have more than 15,000 followers on Instagram and from the sales they make money to live and to do things like the book Güeli (grandmother in Asturian), which came out last Christmas. It began as an action on said platform under the motto # 30diesconremangu, in which followers could send a photo of their grandmother with a text in Asturian that told her biography.

The 35 stories they received were collected into a self-published volume of which 500 copies were printed, running out in two weeks. The interviewee recounts that: "We had to call the printer because we needed another 500. There was a week left until Christmas Eve and we had to have books no matter what. And at the end of January we did another 500, we are already on the third edition."

The layout was carried out by Enar Areces, but with her were also Miguel Sánchez, who did the translation into Asturian; Xicu, who was in charge of editing, correcting and reviewing so that there were no errors, and Marta Taboada, who was the author of the cover. She also created the Puru Remangu logo, which symbolizes a 'fox' (fox). "We met in the apartment in Madrid to have a snack. We worked together in an advertising agency, she as an art director and I as a copy. I needed her help because I don't know how to illustrate and I wanted something that had to do with Asturias and with strength. Suddenly a fox occurred to me: it is an animal from the North and it has mischief, it is intelligent, powerful. And the first sketch he did was the one that stayed", he comments.

After the book, came the short documentary Emburriando (pushing, ramming), about the women's roller derby team La Güestia. "I want to make the remangu visible in other areas and it seemed to me that in sport it is perfectly reflected with La Güestia, because we share all the values ​​that I try to reflect in Puru Remangu", declares Enar Areces. "After Güeli I wanted to try another format. Thinking about the pull we have in social networks, I thought it would be good to have audiovisual content because so far we had not done anything with video. I sent them a message telling them that I wanted to do something with them and It was very, very easy to work together. They gave me everything they wanted to tell and we wrote the script together, with a pleasant organization. I don't know if it's because they are women, although I have a theory that women work much better." he says laughing.

i was looking up how to reheat ribs in oven and my dumbass almost did a how to reheat RICE in oven procedure skskks… https: https://t.co/5kvhIwREAL

— nicole 🐉 Wed May 05 20:00:26 +0000 2021

In relation to these cultural works, he qualifies that it seems very important to him "to make it clear that all the people who collaborated in the book and in the documentary by recording or taking photos received what corresponded to them. I pay that, because until the At the moment we don't have any subsidies, nor cultural grants and the money we get could put more in my pocket, but it seems important to me that we pay all the people we work with. Just as I consider myself a professional, others are too" .

Recently they have also done a collaboration with the illustrator María Ortiz, this time a merchandising job for the Gijón Tourist Office. "They contacted me because they wanted to do something with a local brand and they wanted us to be. I knew what I wanted to reflect but I don't know how to do everything, so together with María we thought about characters and possibilities. Although I live in Gijón I am from El Entrego, so I had to look up stories from the city, because there were some I didn't know about. It got approved and it came out about three weeks ago," he says.

Asturian feminism beyond borders

A little over a month ago, Ione Belarra, current General Secretary of Podemos and Minister of Social Rights and the 2030 Agenda, drew the attention of the media when she came out wearing one of Puru Remangu's t-shirts with the motto: "Fañagüeta. Amasuela, raxa, peseta, castaña, páxara, clica, scold, ñal". All synonymous with vulva. It was a gift from Alba González, Equality Advisor in Congress, who was wearing it at an event they attended in Avilés.

Enar Areces explains that: "Alba wrote to tell me that she was going to place an order on the web that was going to be for the Ministry, because Ione Belarra liked the shirt. I didn't think she was going to go further, It wasn't going to come out anywhere." Belarra herself put a post on her Instagram account dressing her and explaining her story in a text that ends with: "Asturianu & amp; Feminista".

When asked if they consider themselves a benchmark for Asturian feminism, Areces is prudent: "When they tell me it gives me a lot of respect. Because the ones that have to be benchmarks are the feminist groups. A project like Puru Remangu too, but here the singing voice is the feminist and social groups. Our role is to push and be there, to be a bit of the complicit brand". Still, they sell a lot of products outside of the community. "I would almost say that half is sold in Asturias and half to other places. There are many Asturians who are abroad but others, by names and surnames, are not. There are many Galicians, people from León or Basques."

Language is not a problem. "At first we were known as a project only in Asturian. But now, more and more, Asturian is simply normal, a vehicular language that we use to transmit this and that", he assures. Thanks to this work to standardize the language, he won the XXXVI edition of the Andrés Solar Award, granted by the Xunta for the Defense of Asturian Language (XDLA).

An idea is always brewing in Enar Areces' head. "I would like to continue making these videos making the remangu visible like the one we did with sports, doing something with women who live in the towns. And for Christmas there is another collaborative project that I still can't say anything about, but it has to do with sex or rather with sexology". In the future, he would also like to "create workshops, concerts, festivals, set things up but have more people involved. Continue to maintain the brand, but increasingly do more things related to culture and always related to identity, women, the remangu. This umbrella is very wide and can fit a lot of things."