From Aleppo to Barcelona: Renewed hope for a Syrian refugee family
From Aleppo to Barcelona: Renewed hope for a Syrian refugee family
Raed, Noura, and their daughters Lynn and Lea, a Syrian refugee family, were resettled from Lebanon to Calella, near Barcelona, in 2025.
A young family walks along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea beneath an unpredictable autumn sky. The girls laugh, play, and dart around their parents, who stroll hand in hand, smiling. Their easy expressions, steady pace, and the warmth with which they speak to and look at one another radiate a quiet joy. In this place, in this moment, it is unmistakable: they are happy.
They are Raed and Noura, Syrian refugees, with their daughters Lynn, 10, and Lea, 4. After a long exile in Beirut, Lebanon, the family is beginning to feel at home in Calella, a town an hour away from Barcelona, where they arrived through Spain’s resettlement programme in collaboration with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.
“Our life now is very calm. I feel part of the community, not a foreigner,” says Raed, 36, smiling with cheerful eyes. His wife, Noura, her large dark eyes shining, adds: “People here are very kind. If I make a mistake speaking Spanish, they help me. It’s a safe, beautiful and peaceful town. I never want to leave.”
The family arrived in Catalonia in early June 2025 through the resettlement programme—a legal and safe pathway through which Spain receives refugees in particularly vulnerable situations, including families with young children, survivors of violence, and individuals with specific protection needs. After being identified by UNHCR and selected by the Spanish government, refugees travel to Spain, where they are supported throughout their reception and integration by the Spanish Ministry of Inclusion and partner NGOs.
Noura and Raed sit in a square in their new town, Calella.
Through this mechanism, Spain welcomed more than 800 refugees in 2025, most of them Syrian and Nicaraguan, coming from Lebanon and Costa Rica. Among them were Raed, Noura, Lea and Lynn, who turned 10 the same day she landed in Spain—the best gift for her and for the whole family.
With no option but to flee
Raed was born in Aleppo, a city he remembers as “magnificent—ancient and rich in culture.” Like his wife Noura, he enjoyed a happy childhood, surrounded by a large family and close friends. From a young age, he learned a trade that would become his passion—and ultimately change his life. It was while working in a hair salon that he first saw Noura. It was love at first sight; from that moment on, they were inseparable.
Everything changed in 2011, when protests erupted in Syria and later escalated into a 13-year armed conflict. “We had been married for just ten days when our neighbourhood was bombed,” Raed recalls. The couple spent a month displaced within the city, sleeping in the homes of relatives and friends, until they realised there was no safe place left. “We fled in our pyjamas. When we returned a month later, our house was destroyed.”
“One day, I saw a bomb fall on a group of people. It’s something I will never forget,” Noura says, still shaken today. These traumatic experiences, and the constant danger they lived under, ultimately forced them to flee Syria.
Fourteen years of exile in Lebanon
The couple crossed the border into Lebanon in 2012. “At first, we were received with kindness,” explains Raed, who resumed his profession as a stylist. But over time, the small country—strained by the massive arrival of refugees—introduced restrictions and limitations on work. Episodes of discrimination and hostility also increased and life become even harder.
Their two daughters were born there: Lynn in 2015, and Lea six years later. However, their happiness was threatened by growing hardship. “It was beautiful and difficult at the same time. I was alone, without my family nearby. I was happy to have two daughters, but I didn’t want them to live what we lived: war and discrimination,” says Noura, who still regrets not having been able to say goodbye to her father, who passed away during their years in exile.
Raed, Noura, and their daughters Lynn and Lea walk on the beach in their new home, Calella, near Barcelona.
As life in Lebanon became more complicated and the possibility of returning to Syria remained impossible due to the danger, Raed and Noura began to think that they could find a better future for their daughters elsewhere. Because of their particularly difficult situation, when UNHCR raised the possibility of being resettled to another country, they felt their dream was coming true.
The opportunity that changed everything
They will never forget the day they received the call: their family had been selected for resettlement in Spain. “It was the best news of our lives,” Raed says.
The process, delayed by the conflict in Lebanon in 2023 and 2024, lasted more than a year and was marked by interviews, paperwork and preparations. Noura, who already had two brothers living in Catalonia, prayed every day for the transfer to become a reality. “For me, having known so many people who risked their lives at sea, it was a dream to come to Spain legally and safely.”
A new life in Catalonia
The family was received in the coastal town of Calella, where the NGO MPDL supports them through their integration process: language classes, legal guidance, psychological support and help with paperwork and daily tasks, with the goal of reaching autonomy as soon as possible. The girls are already attending school, learning Spanish and Catalan, and where they dream of becoming a doctor and a pilot. “My daughters have a very strong future here, and I will support them in everything they dream of,” says Noura.
Sisters Lea and Lynn play at a playground near their school in Calella, near Barcelona.
The well-being and future of their daughters is the main reason the family came to Spain. They also want to start their own business: a beauty salon. “I want to grow and expand,” says Raed, who makes a perfect team with Noura, a professional makeup artist.
Although their wounds continue to hurt and they wish their home country will finally achieve lasting peace, they know that home is now wherever their daughters can grow up without fear, with peace and with opportunities. A sense of safety that, for Raed, is “a treasure.” A treasure he wishes for everyone: “I have seen war, hunger and death. I wish none of it on anyone. My dream is for all oppressed people to find freedom and safety.”
