On a recent afternoon in January, about two dozen Turkish steelworkers tooted on whistles, trying to get the attention of Barça’s president, Joan Laporta, who’d just shown up for a board meeting.
“Laporta, you jerk,” they chanted. “Try some manual labor!” But Laporta didn’t turn his head as he walked inside.
“We built this stadium,” one worker said, “putting up all this steel, for 21 months.”
He’s part of a group of Turkish laborers who recently protested outside a newly renovated stadium called Camp Nou for Football Club Barcelona, one of the world’s top soccer teams. The cost of the stadium’s multi-million-dollar makeover has been very high, in part due to fines for labor violations. Foreign workers from Romania to Turkey say they have been lured to Spain with high pay, only to be treated like indentured servants.
A group of people wearing red vests with the "CCOO" logo hold red flags during a demonstration outside a large, modern building.
Turkish steel-workers blow whistles as they protest working conditions outside Football Club Barcelona’s newly renovated Camp Nou stadium.Gerry Hadden/The World
The Turkish construction company Limak fired this group of protesters for complaining about conditions and pay.
“They owe us back pay and severance,” he said, “and we’ll stay out here day and night until we get our money.”
This project is Limak’s first-ever in Europe. It won the contract because its bid was the lowest, said reporter Elisenda Colell with the Barcelona newspaper, El Periodico. She and her team found out why, after investigating labor practices on the stadium remodel.
“We found abusive and irregular conditions,” she said. “Workers putting in extra hours without getting paid. Men working without contracts, working weekends and not being paid for it.”
The company took advantage of them, she said, because the workers either didn’t know their rights or were too scared to speak up.
The controversy began in 2023, when Limak hired a Hungarian firm to fly in hundreds of Romanian laborers. Each dawn, the men were bused to the site, worked 10-hour days and were bused home. At their low-end hotel, they barely had time to eat something cold — they had no kitchen — before going to sleep.
A Romanian worker, who wouldn’t show his face in a documentary that Colell’s team made, said they were promised 100 euros a day (about $118), plus a stipend for housing and meals.
But the paychecks didn’t arrive. The Romanians burned through their savings, then went on strike, as the Turks did recently. In retaliation, they said, the company threatened to stop paying their hotel costs.
“They were scared of ending up on the street,” Colell said, “so most workers settled for one-way bus tickets home to Romania. Only a few ever got fully paid.”
That’s the fate the Turkish welders were hoping to avoid. One of Spain’s largest labor unions, known as the Labor Commissions, is trying to help them. Carlos del Barrio, who gave them the whistles, has been explaining to the men their rights in Europe.
A protest banner in front of red tents reads: "EKSTREME WORKSYLIMAK DESPIDEN Y NO PAGAN EL BARÇA LO PERMITE," situated outdoors among trees and grass.
Protesting foreign workers set up a small encampment outside Football Club Barcelona’s new Camp Nou stadium.Gerry Hadden/The World
Attending the protest, he said, “there was a global uproar before the World Cup in Qatar in 2022, over exploited workers there. While here, he says, no one seems to care.”
“It’s easier to block out the moon with your thumb,” he said, using a Spanish proverb to describe willfully ignoring reality. “Abuses were more extreme on the stadium buildings in the Middle East,” he said, “but this kind of exploitation must be denounced anywhere, including in democracies that are supposedly more advanced.”
Del Barrio said the union wrote to FC Barcelona demanding dialogue but it never heard back. The World reached out too, and to the contractor, Limak, but neither has responded.
The club may be ignoring the workers’ complaints, but the regional government of Catalonia hasn’t. Workplace inspectors have fined Barça and its subcontractors around $7 million so far, mostly for labor violations — including overworking people and failing to ensure they have contracts and insurance. But nothing seems to have changed.
“What’s been happening at Camp Nou is a daily reality on virtually all major construction projects in Spain,” Colell said. “For example, the new high-speed train station in Barcelona, or the metro expansion. It’s a structural problem whereby the owner subcontracts out to companies whose only job is to find cheap labor.”
And those companies, she said, feed off of the misery of migrants.
In this case, she said, Barça is not legally responsible for the treatment of workers building its own stadium. But morally, she argued, it is.
“Barça’s motto is ‘more than a club’ and it claims to stand for certain values,” she said. “You’d think it’d keep a close eye on how its stadium construction workers are treated. You’d think they’d care.”
But if Barça doesn’t, the Turkish workers said, maybe its fans will. They come from near and far to visit the stadium, but also the stores, the cafes and an immersive reality experience called Virtual Dream, where you put on high-tech goggles and become a player.
People standing in line outside the entrance of the Barça Immersive Tour, with a blue building featuring the FC Barcelona logo and signage.
Barça fans take part in an immersive reality experience where they can put on high-tech goggles and become a football player for the team.Gerry Hadden/The World
During the protest, a local resident stopped to watch and read the picket signs. When she learned that Limak had stopped paying the workers’ rent in hotels and elsewhere, she got angry.
“Let them fight for their rights,” she said. “They have to do this because if they’re not respected, they’ll get nowhere.”
Workers agreed they have no choice. As for getting somewhere, it could end up being just a ticket back to Turkey. But for now, they said they’d hold out for all the money they’re owed.