"Playing for the Palestinian national team was an adventure," says Roberto. Tito Bishara (Santiago, Chile, 1981), a player who wore that jersey. Fifteen years ago, Palestine began recruiting professional footballers who were sons or grandsons of Palestinians to improve their level, and Bishara signed up. His ancestors were Christian Palestinians from the West Bank who had emigrated to Chile, a country with a significant Palestinian community and a powerful football club, Deportivo Palestino. "I was warned it would be difficult. When you landed in Tel Aviv and the Israeli soldiers saw you were there to play for Palestine, they made your life impossible. They controlled everything, made you undress in a small room, wasted your time... Once, when I returned, they brought me a photo with the president of Palestine for no other reason than to harm me," he recalls.

The global mobilization campaign ACT x Palestine drew attention this Sunday to the fact that tickets for the Catalonia-Palestine match, scheduled for November 18, have not yet gone on sale, and that institutions are not promoting it. "Just compare it to the Basque Country-Palestine match," which will be played three days earlier at San Mamés, the stadium owned by Athletic Club, "for which 35,000 tickets were sold on the first day they went on sale," Luca Gervasoni, spokesperson for ACT x Palestine, told ARA. "There, the administrations and institutions work together to ensure the match is a success. In contrast, in Catalonia, there is a network of entities that are hindering the match from taking place at the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys, and we don't want to point the finger at any one in particular because we don't know who is responsible," he added. Gervasoni's fears about the obstacles to holding the match at Montjuïc appear to be well-founded. Official sources from the Catalan Football Federation (FCF) have confirmed to this newspaper that they are looking for other stadiums to host the game. "Our priority is that it takes place. At this point, the main requirement we've been given for playing at Montjuïc is that it requires an investment of more than 600,000 euros, an unaffordable figure. Other options are being explored. Sabadell and Tarragona are two possibilities," say the Federation sources. It's worth remembering that the Estadi Olímpic can hold around 50,000 spectators and is owned by the city, and that the stadiums in Sabadell and Tarragona have a much smaller capacity, less than 15,000 spectators. "The FCF's priority is to organize it, and that's what we're working on," they assure.