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Shkruar nga Pamfleti
The message is a nod to Rocafonda's famous son Lamine Yamal, the Spanish teenager whose dazzling turn at EURO 2024 helped Spain win their fourth European Championship title in Germany.
His sentiment, scrawled in bold letters next to the concrete slab where children gather every night to kick the soccer ball, is highlighted in graffiti scattered around the neighborhood: " In the Rocafonda neighborhood, more Lamine Yamal, less evictions ."
The message is a nod to Rocafonda's famous son Lamine Yamal, the Spanish teenager whose dazzling turn at EURO 2024 helped Spain win their fourth European Championship title in Germany.
When Yamal, two days before his 17th birthday, became the youngest goalscorer in tournament history, he celebrated with the last three digits of Rocafonda's zip code - 304 - putting the spotlight on this diverse neighborhood , working class in Catalonia.
" It's unbelievable ," said Mussa Dembele, 41, as he walked through the square where Yamal's grandmother, Fatima, settled after arriving in Spain from Morocco three decades ago. " And it's amazing what happened here. Those who once spoke ill of this neighborhood now describe it as good .”
About 20 miles north of Barcelona, Rocafonda, which is located within the Catalan city of Mataró, is home to about 12,000 people, roughly a third of whom were born abroad. As residents from all over Spain mingle with them, whose roots lie in Morocco, Peru and beyond, the far-right Vox party has long sought to portray this diversity as all that is wrong with Spain today, describing districts such as Rocafonda as "multicultural cesspools".
But Yamal, in his quiet and measured way, has managed to turn this view around, becoming the standard for the grueling work ethic that pervades the neighborhood.
Dembele, who has lived in Rocafonda for almost 20 years after moving to Spain from Senegal, says: " They have tried to portray immigrants as worthless. This is a lie. Most of the construction done in this country is by immigrants. Same thing with trash removal. And highway maintenance. We are worth a lot and we have done a lot for this country ."
At the small bar El Cordobés, where Yamal and his father regularly stopped for breakfast before making the 90-minute train ride to training in Barcelona, owner Juan Carlos Serrano Muñoz describes Yamal as the "pride" of a neighborhood that the burden of far-right anti-immigrant sentiment had long since arisen.
" Would they like to focus on migration, on delinquency ," he says. “ But what Lamine did was give these people a kick and tell a different story about this neighborhood; a better story about the integration of the many cultures that live here ."
That doesn't mean the neighborhood is without its challenges, he adds. Evictions have become a daily reality in Rocafonda, according to housing activists, while the latest statistics suggest that nearly half of its residents are at risk of poverty.
These are the kinds of struggles that have always marked Rocafonda, says Antonio Patrón, 93. Originally from Western Spain, he was among the first residents to settle in the area some five decades ago, joining others from Southern Spain in search of work.
" This has always been a neighborhood where people come looking to make a living," he says. "I came here from Extremadura, now others come from beyond. Here we are a mix. "
It is a mixture that has become "the reality of Spain", the coach of the national football team, Luis de la Fuente, recently told ABC newspaper. The assessment came after he was asked about Yamal and Nico Williams, the winger who was born in Pamplona to Ghanaian parents, who after crossing the scorching Sahara barefoot, climbed the border fence in Melilla to enter Spain.
" As a country, it gives us strength, makes us bigger ", he answered. "They are Spanish and we are happy that they are."
More than two weeks after Spain ended their fantastic run at EURO 2024, the question that remains for Rocafonda is whether all the attention will lead to real change. " Lamin is loved, but we must also love those who are not Lamin ," says Mostafa Benktib.
For more than three decades, Benktib has lived in Rokafonda, listening to young people whose Moroccan background made them targets of insults and who struggle to gain a foothold in their careers amid discrimination. "There are kids here who are good people, just like Lamine or Nico, but they're not famous and they're looked down upon because of the color of their skin ," he says. " They also had to be treated well ."
"Yamal and Williams – both born in Spain to African parents – have shown the world that Spain is more than just white people ," says Moha Gerehou, a journalist and anti-racism activist.
" It's something really obvious, but in Spain there are a lot of people who continue to think that all white people are Spanish and those who aren't are foreigners ," he says.
While in the past there have been naturalized Spaniards in the Spanish team, this time is different. " In this case we have two young black men who were born in Spain and who are leaders of the national team ," he says. " It shows a reality that is the reality in the streets, in schools and in Spanish society ."
" But unfortunately it doesn't change structural racism, " he notes. " It does not mean that the police will stop black people because Nico Williams and Lamine Yamal won the European title, it will not make black people die as they reach the borders of Spain. It will not make it easier for blacks to find housing because they won "EURO 2024". These issues require political, social and cultural solutions ."
The dissonance was revealed during EURO 2024 as politicians in the country grappled with how best to deal with the thousands of teenagers and children who have arrived alone in the Canary Islands in recent months after crossing one of the country's deadliest routes. migration in the world.
Even as they cheered for the Spanish team, the extreme right "Vox" and some in the conservative People's party continued to demonize these children. Gerehou says: " I think moments like this with Nico Williams and Lamine Yamal should lead to more discussion of what's happening on the ground ."
However, he believes it's a starting point, which is likely to spark the imagination of many people across the country. Adapted in Albanian " Pamphlet" , from " The Guardian "
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