The sentiment, scrawled in thick black lettering next to the slab of concrete where children gather nightly to kick around footballs, is evoked on graffiti scattered throughout the neighbourhood: “In the Rocafonda neighbourhood, more Lamine Yamals, fewer evictions.”
The message is a nod to Rocafonda’s famous son, Lamine Yamal, the Spanish teenager whose dazzling turn at the recent Euro 2024 helped Spain clinch its record fourth European Championship title.
When Yamal, two days before his 17th birthday, became the youngest goalscorer in the tournament’s history, he celebrated by flashing the last three digits of Rocafonda’s postal code – 304 – unexpectedly thrusting this diverse, working-class neighbourhood in Catalonia into the spotlight.
“It’s incredible,” said Mussa Dembele, 41, as he strolled through the plaza where Yamal’s grandmother Fatima settled after arriving in Spain from Morocco three decades ago. “And it’s amazing what has happened here. Those who used to speak poorly about this neighbourhood now describe it as good.”
Some 20 miles north of Barcelona, Rocafonda which sits within the Catalan town of Mataró, is home to around 12,000 people, approximately a third of whom were born abroad. As residents from across Spain mingle with those whose roots stretch to Morocco, Peru and beyond, the far-right Vox party has long sought to portray this diversity as all that is wrong in modern day Spain, describing districts such as Rocafonda as “multicultural shitholes”.
But Yamal, in his calm, measured way, has managed to turn this view on its head, instead becoming the standard bearer for the gruelling work ethic that threads through this neighbourhood.
Dembele, who has lived in Rocafonda for nearly 20 years after moving to Spain from Senegal, says: “They’ve sought to depict migrants as worthless. That’s a lie. Much of the construction done in this country is by immigrants. Same with garbage removal. And highway maintenance. We’re worth a lot and we’ve done a lot for this country.”
At the small El Cordobés bar, where Yamal and his father regularly stopped in for breakfast before making the 90-minute train trek to practices in Barcelona, owner Juan Carlos Serrano Muñoz describes Yamal as the “pride” of a neighbourhood that had long bore the brunt of the far-right’s anti-immigrant sentiment.
“They wanted to put the focus on migration, on delinquency,” he says. “But what Lamine did is give a kick to these people and told a different story about this neighbourhood; a better story about the integration of the many cultures that live here.”
That’s not to say the neighbourhood is without its challenges, he adds. Evictions have become a daily reality in Rocafonda, according to housing campaigners, while the most recent statistics suggest 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 waves of residents who settled in the area some five decades ago, joining others from southern Spain in search of job opportunities.
“This has always been a neighbourhood where people come looking to earn a living,” he says. “I came here from Extremadura, now others come from further. Here we’re a mix.”
It’s a mix that has become Spain’s “reality”, Luis de la Fuente, the manager of the national football team, recently told newspaper ABC. The assessment came after he was asked about Yamal and Nico Williams, the winger who was born in Pamplona to Ghanian parents who, after crossing the scorching Sahara barefoot, climbed the border fence at Melilla to enter Spain.
“As a country it gives us strength, it makes us greater,” he replied. “They are Spaniards and we are happy that they are.”
More than two weeks after Spain ended its dramatic Euro 2024 run, the question hovering over many in Rocafonda is whether all the attention will lead to real change. “Lamine is loved but we also need to love those who are not Lamine,” says Mostafa Benktib.
For more than three decades Benktib has lived in Rocafonda, hearing of youngsters whose Moroccan background made them the target of insults and those struggling to gain a foothold in their careers amid discrimination. “There are children here who are good people, much like Lamine or Nico, but who are not famous and are looked down upon because of their skin colour,” he says. “They needed to be treated well as well.”
Yamal and Williams – both born in Spain to parents from Africa – have shown the world that Spain is more than just white people, says Moha Gerehou, a journalist and anti-racism campaigner. “It’s something really obvious but in Spain there are a lot of people who continue to think that all white people are Spaniards and those who aren’t are foreigners,” he says.
While there have been naturalised Spaniards on the Spanish team in the past, this time is different. “In this case we have two young Black men who were born in Spain and who are the leaders of the national team,” he says. “It showcases 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 won’t mean that police will stop singling out Black men because Nico Williams and Lamine Yamal won the European title, it won’t make Black people less likely to die as they arrive at Spain’s borders, it’s not going to make it easier for Black people to find housing because they won the Euro 2024. Those issues require political, social and cultural solutions.”
The dissonance was laid bare 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 braving one of the world’s deadliest migration routes.
Even as they cheered on the Spanish team, the far-right Vox and some in the conservative People’s party continued to demonise these children. Gerehou says: “I think that moments like this with Nico Williams and Lamine Yamal, they need to lead to more discussion of what is happening on the ground.”
Still, he believes, it’s a starting point, one that will likely ignite the imaginations of many across the country.
At a bus stop in Rocafonda, Iyad, 13, agrees. He nearly burst with pride as he watched Yamal – who, like him, was born in Spain to a Moroccan parent – flash the 304 sign during the Euro Cup tournament, he says. “It’s great because Lamine always reminds people where he’s from.”
Sitting next to him, his mother Saida chimes in, smiling. “Now almost all the kids here want to play football well so they can become the next Lamine.”
