Juan Carlos Gafo, Spain’s ambassador to Beirut, was a cultured diplomat who gifted books and a photographer who held exhibitions. He often expressed his admiration for Lebanese people who follow La Liga and support the Spanish national team during the World Cup, as if they were Spanish citizens. In a press interview once, he said that whenever he was in a public place in Beirut, and people learned he was Spanish, they would immediately tell him: “¡Viva España!”
From time to time, the ambassador would visit southern Lebanon to check on the situation there and on the soldiers from his country serving with the UNIFIL mission in the Marjayoun area. Once, after he had finished his official remarks, I jokingly asked him about his namesake, Juan Carlos, who played in the 1990s for Atlético Madrid and FC Barcelona. He smiled. What had caught my attention was that the football player, the ambassador, and the king at the time, Juan Carlos I, father of the current king Felipe VI, all shared the name Juan Carlos, which made me smile.
Actually, my girlfriends and I used to hide our passion for football and our love for FC Barcelona, since the sport was seen as a masculine affair, one whose roughness supposedly contradicted our “gentle” nature as women. For a long time, we would mock the Spanish by joking that they were all named Juan Carlos, or at least all the ones we knew, and we would burst into laughter over it. Then the three Juan Carloses disappeared from the scene, and along came Lamine Yamal, a name that tangled our tongues whenever we tried to pronounce it and made us nostalgic for the easy, familiar name Juan Carlos.
On a personal level, I became a FC Barcelona supporter early on, and I had always dreamed of traveling to Barcelona and stepping into Camp Nou. I fulfilled that dream rather late, wandering through the tourist-crowded city and its tedious Antoni Gaudí architecture, yet I never grew tired of it.
FC Barcelona is the magical rope with which the narrow Catalan city pulls the world toward it, and no one ever seems to tire of it. Its magic lies in the artistry of its players: speed, possession, passing, consistency, and victories firmly rooted across time, along with the strategies of its coaches and their king, Pep Guardiola. And then there is Lamine Yamal, the “Catalan with black eyes” of African origins, who has embodied the game, its artistry, and Barcelona’s magic ever since he was a fifteen-year-old child.
A few days ago, during FC Barcelona’s celebrations after winning the Spanish league title over their traditional rivals Real Madrid CF, the players appeared aboard an open-top bus driving through the streets of Barcelona, crowded with tourists, Gaudí’s tedious architecture, and celebrating fans.
Amid the roaring chants, Lamine Yamal raised the Palestinian flag and waved it high. With his own peculiar magic, the world suddenly turned into a festival of statements, as reactions and declarations flooded in, first in support, then in condemnation, or pale disapproval.
The sight of Lamine Yamal waving the Palestinian flag sparked anger in Israel, although it was hardly an exceptional scene in Barcelona. Since the beginning of the war on Gaza, the city has stood alongside the Palestinian people, making his gesture a natural reflection of its political mood.
As for FC Barcelona itself, the Catalan club has long offered a model of how football can transcend the boundaries of the pitch and move into the realm of politics, using the very same techniques: attack, defense, and the fluid maneuvers in between.
Lamine Yamal raised the flag of a people who have been subjected to genocide for more than two years, and for him, human solidarity with them is beyond question. A sports star of his stature and fame knows that his voice can reach the furthest corners of the world. He also knows he can give Gaza’s tragedy a broader human dimension, urging influential figures like himself not to stop at sympathy alone, but to use their platforms and influence to pressure their own governments, in the hope that those governments, in turn, might pressure Israel.
Israel’s response was swift and furious, as the public assertion of the Palestinian narrative poses an existential threat to its own. Demands for explanations and apologies quickly followed, alongside calls for FIFA to intervene and impose a ban on the FC Barcelona player. Its Defense Minister, Israel Katz, rushed to accuse Lamine Yamal of “inciting hatred,” while far-right groups described his gesture as “stupid.” Meanwhile, the Israeli supporters’ club of FC Barcelona filed a complaint with the club’s headquarters in Barcelona, calling the act harmful.
What Lamine Yamal began was further amplified by Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, who said that Yamal had made Spain “proud.” He argued that those who view the waving of a national flag as “incitement to hatred” have either “lost their moral compass or been blinded by their own shamelessness.” He also stressed that Yamal had merely expressed the solidarity of millions of Spaniards with Palestine, which, he added, was yet another reason to be proud of him.
What further intensified Israel’s anger was that, the following day, Pedro Sánchez wrote that Spain’s recognition of Palestine and its condemnation of the war on Gaza reflected the position of both its people and government, not merely that of a FC Barcelona star. He added that Lamine Yamal would be honored, and that the Palestinian flag would become a symbol of celebration in Spain’s streets.
Spain, in fact, had already adopted firm ethical, humanitarian, and political positions toward the Palestinian cause long before Gaza and long before Yamal. It describes Israel in the West Bank as an occupying power and calls on it to halt settlement expansion and attacks against Palestinians. Spain was also one of three European countries to recognize the State of Palestine in 2024, and it hinted at the possibility of arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he pass through its airspace, in accordance with the International Criminal Court warrant.
How beautiful it is, then, to repeat once more: “¡Viva España!”
Meanwhile, in Gaza, still drenched in its own blood, people celebrated what they saw as Barcelona’s victory over Israel and expressed their gratitude for what Lamine Yamal had done. They painted the brave Catalan teenager carrying the Palestinian flag on the walls of crumbling buildings and thanked him for having the courage to use his platform in solidarity with their tragedy.
Yamal’s gesture reveals the depth of the global shift in public attitudes toward Israel, particularly at the level of ordinary people. At the same time, it highlights the soft power of sport and its ability to cast a human shadow over rigid political positions, allowing a flag waving in the streets of one city to express a stance whose symbolism surpasses international resolutions and official statements, compelling the world to pay attention to what many see as a just cause.
So what drives a star to expose himself to such furious backlash, if not the desire to prove that human public opinion, no matter how distant or powerless it may seem, cannot help but side with the oppressed, the suffering, and the persecuted? And that sport can change what neither politics nor weapons have been able to change?
The world acknowledged that Lamine Yamal’s gesture achieved a moral and humanitarian victory for Palestine, and for Gaza in particular. That, perhaps, is precisely what Israel lacks. The gesture served as a warning that its isolation is no longer merely theoretical, nor impossible to imagine or believe in.
Far from the labyrinths of politics, football fields operate differently: stars build a goal gradually, accumulating it tactically from the moment the ball leaves their own half until it lands in the opponent’s net. And beloved Barça players like Lamine Yamal do not leave the pitch without scoring goals capable of overturning results and expectations alike.