MALAGA. – We don’t trust journalists.
The interview with the presidents of the football club CD 26 de Febrero begins with suspicious signs. The representatives of the media are not particularly loud in the residential area of Palma-Palmilla in Malaga, which of course has a logical explanation.
The overwhelming majority of stories about Palma-Palmilla deal with its dark side. The news usually tells about the drug trade, gang clashes and harsh living conditions.
The Spanish newspaper ABC named it in the spring Palma-Palmilla as one of the most dangerous places in Spain. Countless Malagasy people, when they hear the name of the area, tell them to go around it from afar.
– Remember to wear a bulletproof vest, one of the townspeople joked after hearing the subject of this talk show.
CD 26 de Febrero’s leader and restaurateur Fernando Muñoz those jokes are not funny.
– We can’t deny that there are downsides to this area. However, 80 percent of Palma-Palmilla’s residents are ordinary, good people. Why does the bad 20 percent always get attention? Muñoz, who has lived in the area all his life, asks.
Muñoz and other football activists are frustrated. They have spent a large part of their lives making Palma-Palmilla a better place to live. Especially for children and young people whose parents are in prison, addicted to drugs or otherwise just absent.
Malaga, the sixth largest city in Spain, is familiar to tens of thousands of Finns, if not as a landing place for airplanes on their way to tourist destinations on the Costa del Sol like Fuengirola or Torremolinos.
With almost 600,000 inhabitants, Malaga is one of the pearls of Spanish tourism, which beaches, restaurant life, cultural attractions and beautiful nature brought to the city last year a record number of tourists (more than 1.3 million hotel guests).
Just a few kilometers away from the prosperous downtown area, on the other side of the dried up river, we live in a different kind of reality.
Palma-Palmilla was built in the northern part of Malaga at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s as a residential area or barrio for city dwellers living in poverty and miserable conditions. Although the living conditions of many improved with the change, the city that experienced the tourist boom quickly forgot the area.
Palma-Palmilla became an isolated place without proper services and infrastructure. It made it a favorable area for drug trafficking and crime.
Since then, the area has been renovated and services have been added, but many problems have remained. According to the Spanish Statistical Office, which measured rent levels in different areas, Palma-Palm, with approximately 30,000 inhabitants, has a total the ninth poorest residential area in the country.
– Families have to struggle with their livelihood. Some of the children in the area are like orphans. Their parents are in prison or involved in drugs, the management ladder of the football club 26 de Febrero includes Ismael Gómez and Juan Rodríguez tell.
Football has been a way to help. On 26 de Febrero’s home turf, people are on an equal footing, regardless of where they come from and how much money they have in their account.
According to the story, the priests of the nearby parish once started kicking the ball near 26 de Febrero’s current home ground in Virreina. The games gained popularity over the years until CD 26 de Febrero, named after one of the neighborhoods, became an official club in 1991.
Today, 26 de Febrero is a breeding club without an adult team. 19-year-olds are the club’s oldest age group. After that, the players usually move to other clubs in Malaga and southern Spain.
But the main function of 26 de Febrero is not to produce footballers.
– We want children and young people to grow into good people. Whether they become bricklayers or plumbers, the main thing is that they value themselves, says vice-president Juan Rodríguez.
26 de Febrero club activists are familiar sights in school classrooms and yards. They have taken school children who are being thrown to school, helped teachers during recess and stressed the importance of studying.
Chairman Muñoz tells about the agreement the club has made with its players: everyone is welcome to practice, but only those who have proven to have attended school are allowed to play in the weekend matches.
– If we find out that someone has filmed, he sits on the bench next to the assistant coach for the entire game. The task of the assistant coach is to explain to the youngster why he cannot get on the field.
Children and young people can play on 26 de Febrero for free if their families cannot afford to pay the club a monthly fee of 10 euros. Most of them don’t.
– I don’t know how many times we have given food to hungry children and their families. Children are everything to us. They are the future of this region, says Ismael Gómez.
Teaching and coaching young people is only part of 26 de Febrero’s work. At least the same amount of work has been enough for the parents.
Anyone who has been to Spanish minor league or youth games knows how easily emotions in the stands get heated.
Palma-Palm was no exception. Arguments and fights were often seen in the stands until the club started systematic work with the players’ families.
– It’s easy for parents to overcook, because they see something new in their child Messi or Ronaldo’s. At the beginning of the season, we gather the parents together and go through how to behave on the side of the field. There have been no incidents on our home field for 15 years, says Gómez.
The age group matches played on the Virreina field on Saturday afternoon show that Gómez’s words are true. Salsa and other dance music is playing full blast in Ämyrei, the laughter is fresh and the beer is flowing. A bunch of loud soccer moms and dads have a mecca, but the feedback on the field remains encouraging.
The match event brings to mind parties where an excited and relaxed atmosphere prevails. The three-euro entrance fee is optional.
Palma-Palmilla’s multiculturalism can be seen on the field and in the stands. There are Spaniards, Roma, Arabs and people of African background, all on the side of the barrio’s own club.
Here, the difficulties of the residential area seem far away.
– In Palma-Palmilla, different nationalities have learned to live side by side, Fernando Muñoz points out and takes an example from the end of last year.
When Spain and Morocco met in the quarter-finals of the World Cup in December, the Spaniards and Moroccans watched the tight match together in the bars of Palma-Palmilla.
– It was a really good-natured evening. The Moroccans get to thank for their victory (Spain’s head coach) Luis Enrique, who thought of putting his inexperienced son-in-law on the field! Muñoz declares with a laugh and refers to Ferran Torres.
“The most important thing is respect”
26 de Febrero’s work has also brought results on the field. The club has promoted numerous players to the tough leagues in Spain and Europe.
Right now, the young people of Palma-Palmilla are thriving from Antoñín.
The 23-year-old striker played in the Spanish youth national team in recent years. Today, he is on loan in the main league of Cyprus.
Another success story is one who plays in the city’s number one club, Malaga CF Luis Muñoz. The 26-year-old midfielder has said that he is proud of his roots in Palma-Palmilla.
– That kind of feedback is the best we can get. That our boys leave here and tell others that Palma-Palm is not as bad a place as they say, says Ismael Gómez.
26 de Febrero has become a serious breeding club in southern Spain. It has increased the interest of sponsors and talent scouts. The funds have become necessary. Although the chairmen and many club members do their work on a volunteer basis, the club has invested in hiring high-quality junior coaches.
They have brought to the 26 de Febrero teams a culture of disciplined sports life and training.
– The players see every day that they are invested in. Both the team management and the coaches do their best so that we get the most out of ourselves, a 16-year-old midfielder Juan Ignacio Barrionuevo tells.
Known by the nickname “Nake”, Barrionuevo dreams of playing in the Spanish premier league, La Liga, in the future. He says he is grateful for the lessons the club has given him.
– The club has emphasized the importance of humility and cooperation. The most important thing has been respect. Without the ability to respect others, you can’t get by in life.
It has been instilled in the players that the best medicine against prejudice is to treat others with respect.
It was also noticed by a futista who lives 20 kilometers away in the city of Benalmadena Alberto Bustos. Son of Bustos Nicholas, 14, wanted to join 26 de Febrero a couple of years ago to become a better player. Father Bustos was not enthusiastic.
– Everything we had heard about Palma-Palmilla created fear. I reluctantly agreed to the transfer. Then we came here and the locals took us in. They helped us with everything. I can only take my hat off to these people, says Alberto Bustos.
Nicolas Bustos and another Benalmadena player Juan Lopez15, say that their home region still doesn’t understand the decision to play in Palma-Palmilla.
– Our friends wonder how we can be here. However, they have never been here.
You can’t close your eyes to Palma-Palmilla’s problems. When you go from Virreina’s soccer field to a deeper area, you can see the difference to the touristy Malaga that shines with its cleanliness.
There are faint people with misty eyes walking on the streets, the facades of the houses have been allowed to deteriorate and the eyes show fatigue caused by a hard life. There is no point with a camera in those large area settlements where crime flourishes most clearly.
But then there is the other side of Palma-Palmilla. The bubbling atmosphere in the lunch restaurant run by chairman Muñoz, groups of friends playing board games at small tables in the streets, neighbors exchanging news…
The streets of Palma-Palmilla have a sense of community that many places have lost.
Muñoz, Gómez and Rodríguez, who grew up in the area, are moved when they tell what Palma-Palmilla means to them. Love for one’s own barrio shines through everything: from the way of talking about life in the area and fiercely defending oneself from criticism.
– This is above all the workers’ area. Life is more modest than elsewhere, but we take care of each other, Fernando Muñoz describes.
– I have friends who live in the sophisticated areas of Malaga. They have said that the neighbors there don’t even greet each other. What kind of life is that? Ismael Gómez wonders.