One of the most heartbreaking moments in the documentary Side B: Canada Real Galiana arrives when Adil Ajahiou, one of its three young protagonists (the most talkative and the most talkative), recounts an episode of discrimination he suffered at school: “Those from La Cañada there, at that table”, the tutor in the dining room reprimanded them, separating them from the world and marking them with a stigma that still weighs on them, even if they fight against this stigma every day.
In such an unfavourable context, where economic or family difficulties are compounded by discrimination, a passion like football can become a powerful tool for change and hope. This is what this report by journalist Javi Valle tells us about for the sports content platform DAZN, which offers it for free on its website (only prior registration is required). Valle talks to Somos Madrid to explain the ins and outs of a short piece, but one that avoids sensationalism and any extreme tone to show a brighter side of La Cañada without forgetting its reality. He is not alone: the other two main protagonists of this story of sport and friendship travel alongside Adil to the DAZN offices, where the meeting takes place: Ismail Benayad “Isma” and Ibrahim Zarkan “Ibra”.
At 23 and 21, they both dedicated themselves to taxis, a path that Adil showed them and in which they saw the opportunity to build a future. It gave them a horizon, an aspiration, just like football did when they were little: “Above all, it allowed you to focus on the game and not get distracted,” explains Isma. Rocío Díaz, a social educator at the El Fanal Association, sums it up in the documentary: “Here, football is everything: learning to resolve conflicts, making friends, experiencing moments of neighborhood coexistence…” Its value can even be physical and material: “When Filomena had nothing to warm us up, so to be less cold, we started playing football,” recalls Isma.
When Valle began designing the report and making his first visits to La Cañada a year ago, “I didn’t have a very clear idea.” “The first day I was crazy about colors, for better or for worse,” he admits. But he met Adil and Isma and everything began to take shape: “These kids are the best. I talked to them for half an hour and the story that had to be told was shoved in my face. I realized that they could be the protagonists of a report and that at the end, everyone would admire them like an elite soccer player.”
“Actually, here I was the only one who knew about DAZN,” Isma says with a laugh. “There’s a lot of press and we’re tired because they always come back for the same thing: they film the poor guy without electricity fixing his solar panels, or they look for drug kiosks, it’s always a bad thing. When Javi arrived, I was interested because they told us that the documentary was about football and because he didn’t put the camera directly into it, but rather wanted to get to know us and was interested in other things,” he explains more seriously. “We’re tired of feeling stigmatized,” he denounces. “For me, it was very important not only to destigmatize, but to do it while respecting the way these kids see Canada, its people and football,” Valle explains.
Because this sport is still very present today in their lives and in La Cañada, no matter how much Adil no longer lives there or how much Isma admits that he only sleeps, preferring to spend the rest of the day in Vallecas. The exception comes on the weekend, when the curious football field is operational, with unusual socks, that FIFA has installed in sector 6 (where these three children come from).
There is a lot of press and we are tired because they always repeat the same thing: they film the poor man without electricity repairing his solar panels, or they look for drug kiosks, which is always a bad thing.
Ismail Benayad
— Protagonist of “Cara B: Cañada Real Galiana” and taxi driver
“I arrived one day and a lot of people were playing there. It was incredible,” says Valle, who in the documentary is encouraged to compete in a triangular and sees firsthand the quality of La Cañada. “We got to the point where we had 40 or more guys, divided into seven or eight teams that we would enter and leave depending on who won each game,” says Isma. It may sound like a joke, and the truth is that camaraderie trumps competition, but they take it very seriously. Everyone wants to be the king of the track.
Despite all that this place contributes, its history also has a side that shows the institutional abandonment that always ends up hitting La Cañada Real in one way or another. Not only because it is closed during the week, but also because FIFA’s initial project was never fully carried out and the organization “left it abandoned,” Valle laments. Now, it is the young people who benefit from it who have to maintain it. “There was a manager who promised us toilets, changing rooms and other things that were never finished. But in the end, they only built a field and a basketball court that, in reality, no one uses. We don’t know what happened to that other part of the budget,” says Isma.
Football in the mud and dreams against the mountains
Fortunately, they are not new to managing their own estate. Before this installation, they were the ones who improvised and set up a place to play football, the old field that has now practically disappeared. In the report, they tell how they created it: a few irons for the goals, tires to mark out the playing field and some nets that they “borrowed” from the sports centers of Vallecas.
Going back even further, they were simply hitting the ball on a hill (even if there are few). “I don’t even know where we really played,” Isma recalls with a smile. The best place to observe La Cañada from above, with that other Madrid on the horizon, was also the scene of many childhood games, countless goals scored with two stones and occasional chilling injuries on the slope.
Today, times have changed, although the lack of light and the inaction of the Community of Madrid (if not its controversial interventions) show that not everything has been for the best. Ibra, for his part, boasts that his nephew can take the first steps and the first steps in the Rayo Vallecano Foundation that life deprived him of when he dreamed of a football career.
This was impossible due to economic, but also social or logistical barriers. The Ensanche de Vallecas, the nearest population centre, is half an hour away on foot. When they were children, there was no bus that connected them to the area. In the last three years, there has been one, which only runs once a day, but it hits them hard. “To go somewhere or to go home, you had to cross a mountain,” Isma explains. It may sound like a metaphor, but it was literally an obstacle.
Some of the barriers were also social and mental, which were transferred to the charter school they attended (they didn’t have the option of attending a public school). They talk about teachers who criticized them in front of their classmates for taking advantage of “free” things that others had to pay for.
For me, it was very important not only to destigmatize, but to do it while respecting the way these kids see Canada, its people and football.
Javi Valle
— DAZN journalist and director of the documentary ‘Cara B: Cañada Real Galiana’
Ibra, for example, was used as an example of good behavior compared to other friends from La Cañada with worse behavior, as if those who come from an environment with worse conditions did not have the right to make mistakes, as if their mistakes mattered more than rest or as if they almost had to apologize for being there. “It hurt me, because I come from La Cañada and if he shows it to them, he shows it to me too,” he laments. That is why he loves even more those who have not put a cross on them because of their origin, like a teacher who was always interested in his situation and helped him in everything he needed.
And perhaps also because of that complicated childhood, Ibra developed an armor that she gradually sheds in the documentary, which begins as a story with two protagonists and ends up adding to it. In the last minutes, it opens up and pours out, sharing a humanity like the one that resides in all the inhabitants of La Cañada behind the stigma.
He admits that he likes to see himself and to be seen. Like Isma, he is convinced by the way they are represented in Side B: Canada Real Galiana: “The other day, Adil and I were with two friends and I played the documentary. The truth is that it is very beautiful. But the best thing is that I turned around and Adil was the guy wiping the tears from his eyes,” Ibra says, laughing.
At the end of the interview, Ibra and Isma tour the DAZN headquarters: the different editorial departments (motorsport, football or a basketball area that still doesn’t interest them too much), the recording studios or the set where Antonio Lobato records his programs after the Formula 1 races. For a moment, before returning to his taxi and then to La Cañada, they feel like two children with a new football.
- Javi Valle’s documentary for DAZN Side B: Canada Real Galiana It is available for free, upon registration, on this link.
