The Guardian Weekly

Spain Football star tackles the real problem of racism

Real Madrid’s Vinícius Júnior was driven to tears by vitriolic chants – but what do people of colour face every day in Spain?

By Sam Jones MADRID

One afternoon last week, a young boy in a Real Madrid strip trotted on to a damp neighbourhood football pitch in the centre of the Spanish capital, oblivious to both the racism flung at the man whose name he wore on his back, and to the national and international debate it had generated. “We haven’t told him about the Vinícius thing yet,” said Mohamed’s mother, Milene Dos Santos, as she and her husband looked on from the sidelines. “If he asks, then we’ll tell him. im. He’s only seven, but he’ll need to o be prepared for what’s to come.”

It appears the events of recent ent weeks have been too much for many, any, far older, Spaniards to take in, too. oo. The abuse hurled at Real Madrid’s id’s Brazilian winger Vinícius Júnior during a match against Valencia late last month resulted in three swift arrests sts. Four other people, meanwhile, were ere arrested in connection with the dummy, dressed in the player’s shirt, hirt, that was hung from a bridge in the Spanish capital.

The 22-year-old footballer, who was reduced to tears by the racist aggresressions, said his treatment was proof f of just how thoroughly racism permeates both La Liga and Spanish society.

“I’m sorry for those Spaniards who disagree but today, in Brazil, Spain is known as a country of racists,” he said after the match. His words were echoed by Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who called on Fifa and La Liga to take “serious measures”: “We cannot allow fascism and racism to seize control of football stadiums.”

Spain’s political leaders were forced to position themselves on the issue of racism as the country went to the polls for regional and municipal elections last Sunday. The Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said that “hatred and xenophobia should have no place in football nor in our society”. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the conservative People’s party, said racism and sport were “totally incompatible”, but added: “Spain is not a racist country in any way.”

The campaign trail platitudes and denials felt remote to some of those around the pitch where Mohamed and his teammates were training in Lavapiés, the Madrid neighbourhood where African and Bangladeshi shops and restaurants rub up against hipster coffee shops. Their neighbourhood club, Dragones de Lavapiés, fields 20 teams made up of about 400 players from more than 50 countries.

Dos Santos, who was born in Portugal to parents from Cape Verde but has lived in Spain for 30 of her 32 years, said she had grown up with all manner of microaggressions, from people touching her hair to repeated questions as to why she spoke such good Spanish. “It’s a burden I’ve carried since I was a kid,” she said. “I grew up here but I’ve never felt like I was from here.”

She and her husband, Ibrahim Ndao, who was born in Senegal, felt bad about the abuse Vinícius had suffered, but were not surprised by it.

“There’s systemic racism in Spain and I hope what’s happened opens people’s eyes to it,” she said. “There are very few politicians of colour; you look at all the TV election debates and there’s no one of colour.” Spain, she added, “still has a long way to go”.

Mame Gueye, who had brought her eight-year-old son, Serigne, to Dragones training, said she had felt awful when she saw what Vinícius had been forced to endure.

“He was so depressed and powerless about what was happening,” she said. “I think he was scared and

nervous and has suffered a lot and no one has done anything. He’s complained and nothing’s been done.”

However, Gueye, who moved from Senegal 15 years ago, disagreed with some of the player’s comments. “Racism exists here but I don’t agree Spain is a racist country,” she said.

The Dragones de Lavapiés, which was founded nine years ago, promotes diversity and fights racism and stereotypes. The club’s president, Dolores Galindo, said racism still goes unseen by much of Spanish society.

“If you’re a white person and you’ve never experienced it personally, you don’t believe in racism,” said Galindo, who is white. “Until you spend a lot of time with kids of colour – especially African kids – you don’t realise just how often things happen to them, one after another. And it’s not just someone saying something on the pitch.”

According to a survey published last year, 25% of Spaniards aged 15-29 (the majority of them male) hold clearly racist or xenophobic views, with most of their racial hatred directed at Gypsies and people from sub-Saharan Africa and Morocco. Figures from Spain’s interior ministry show that police investigated 639 racist or xenophobic incidents in 2021 – a 24% rise on 2019.

None of this came as a surprise to Okba Mohammad, a 24-year-old Syrian journalist who has lived in Spain since fleeing his home town of Deraa during the Bashar al-Assad regime’s Russianbacked offensive there five years ago.

Mohammad thought the poisonous events in Valencia’s Mestalla stadium would soon fade from public discourse: “But the people who won’t forget it are the people of colour who suffer racism and report it every day.”

Inside

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2023-06-02T07:00:00.0000000Z

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