2023-11-20 04:00:42
During the day he spends hours dismantling plasterboard ceilings, iron plates, useless cables and piling up debris from the Camp Nou construction sites. Mohamed is one of the workers working on the demolition of the Barça stadium. but at night snuggles into a borrowed sleeping bag, hiding among the bushes in a garden in front of the club facilities. “I have had to sleep on the street because, If not, I would be out of a job.“, acknowledges the man, who requests anonymity to tell his story to EL PERIÓDICO.
Mohamed is Moroccan, he is 50 years old and in June he started working on the Camp Nou construction. He lives in a gloomy house that is falling apart, without water or electricity, in Manresa. “For me it is impossible to find a suitable apartment, especially in Barcelona. “They ask for deposits, they ask for contracts… With luck, I only have enough to eat,” admits the man, who before working at the Camp Nou worked hard. precarious jobs in construction or in the livestock sector, sometimes without a contract. To get to the Barça stadium, every day He gets up at five in the morning and travels around the entire metropolitan area by train. in a convoy that leaves his town at six.
Delay and threats
Although they have never paid him, Mohamed has worked 14 Saturdays in the Camp Nou works: from June 9 to September 8. “On Saturdays we have to enter at eight in the morning and leave at two in the afternoon,” he explains. The first Saturday that he had to go to work at the stadium, he arrived 30 minutes late: the first train passes half an hour later than the one he usually takes.
That day he explained to the manager that he had a problem with public transportation. Far from finding understanding, faced threats of losing his job. “The manager told me that If I was late again they would kick me out. That he forgave me for a day, but no more. That’s why from then on I started sleeping on the street, “I didn’t want to be left without a job.”.
Without a rest
Since then, Mohamed has slept 14 nights outdoors, right in front of your workplace. He spends the night every Friday among some bushes on the avenue that separate the northern entrance of the field from the Les Corts funeral home. “It’s been horrible because you can’t sleep: you mosquitoes bite, there is noise and you are afraid that someone will see you or something will happen to you.” Still, he feels he had no choice. “If I lose my job, what do I do? I lose everything. Without work you can’t live”.
He explains that the worst thing about those days was enduring the six extra hours worked on Saturdays. “I have suffered a lot because, after not being able to rest, you start doing very hard work“I was very weak and could barely work.” What scared him the most was having an accident and getting hurt. “This job is very complicated, you risk your life. You have to be very attentive, be very careful. After sleeping on the street you are afraid that the wall will breakit falls on you and you get hurt for not being careful.”
No charge on Saturdays
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That’s why he gets nervous when he realizes that, according to his payroll, has not been paid not one of these 14 extraordinary days. According to the construction agreement, only those Saturdays worked would correspond to 1,412.88 euros gross. In reality, working on Barça’s construction sites, he earns a salary of 1,000 euros per month and 56 hours each week. “And all this suffering for four dollars!I look like a slave!“, he complains. “I don’t know anything, I don’t know how to read or write.” After getting angry, she sits down and tries to calm down. “Well, that’s life. What do you do? Life is very hard, I have suffered a lot. I am just a worker who is looking for a piece of bread. I can’t do anything or say anything because I need the job to live.“I don’t have another one,” he assumes, crestfallen.
Last Thursday, the president of Barça, Joan Laporta, greeted him during a media visit to the works. “He shook my hand and said thank you very much,” explains Mohamed, proudly. He says that he would have wanted to tell him many things. “That they do something for us, that they pay us what we getthis can’t be.” But in the end he didn’t do it. He stood paralyzed watching his bosses take photos with Laporta. “It made me very afraid and ashamed.”
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