The Islamophobic shouts at the Cornellà-El Prat stadium during the match between Egypt and Spain have gone around the world and are a very worrying exponent of the level of disinhibition of the extreme right everywhere. The case is especially regrettable because the best player of the Spanish national team and probably of the world is a Catalan of Muslim religion named Lamine Yamal, raised in the Rocafonda neighborhood of Mataró. The Barça star has sent a forceful message through social networks and has branded the "racists" and "ignorant" the scoundrels who on Tuesday chanted all sorts of insults, including to Pedro Sánchez, at the Espanyol stadium.
There is no doubt that the Spanish nationalist far-right party Vox has tried to instrumentalize this match to send a double message, one explicit and one implicit. The explicit one is that Catalonia is part of Spain, and they have said so on their official profiles, and the implicit one is that one can only be Spanish if one professes a certain religion, which is not precisely Muslim. Here, however, Lamine Yamal breaks all these stereotypes because he is a Catalan Muslim with a Guinean mother and a Moroccan father. This makes him especially singled out by national-Catholic Spanish nationalism, but we cannot ignore that there is also an Islamophobic Catalan nationalism represented by Aliança Catalana.
Given this, it must be stated that Lamine Yamal is one of ours, a Catalan with diverse origins that is intrinsic to the history and identity of Catalonia, which has been forged over the centuries with contributions from different national, linguistic, and religious groups. Any attempt to separate Catalans based on origin or religion not only goes against human rights and legality, but would be suicidal for the Catalan nation. The best Catalanism was built against this temptation of 'us alone'.
That said, it is also surprising that the Spanish Football Federation was not aware that a Spanish national football match attracts a different audience in Catalonia than in any other part of the State's geography, and that anti-Catalan and the most rancid Spanish nationalist groups would take advantage of it to make themselves noticed. If they already do so sporadically in Espanyol matches, even more so with a Spanish national team match. Paradoxically, the events in Cornellà are also an indirect consequence of the political conflict between Catalonia and Spain.
Let us remember that less than three months ago, a friendly match was played between the Catalonia and Palestine national teams at the Lluís Companys Stadium in Montjuïc with 50,000 people and a very different atmosphere of solidarity between peoples and religions. And two months ago, a concert was held at the Palau Sant Jordi with stars like Rosalía, also in solidarity with Gaza. Without a doubt, these last two events are more representative of Catalan society than what was experienced on Tuesday in Cornellà.
