The boy who grew up in the Sierra Sur is still a day laborer, but in other fields. Anssumane Fati (Guinea Bissau, October 31, 2002) has performed the miracle that his meteoric soccer career is the common heritage of two peoples at ideological antipodes.
In Marinaleda, where the soccer player’s father found his first job, Juan Manuel Sanchez Gordillo, historical leader of the Field Workers’ Union, has ruled for 41 leagues in a row. Herrera, the town where Barca’s revelation began to emerge as a footballer, is the only municipality in the Sierra Sur governed by the PP, with Jorge Muriel as mayor. “They call us the island,” says Isabel Roldan Galvez, delegate for Social Welfare, Culture, Sports and Tourism.
Herrera is not Cordoba by six kilometers. It is between Estepa and Puente Genil , the respective homelands of the Polvoron and Quince. Its streets are crossed these days by tractors filled to the top with olives at the beginning of the green season, with the meat open due to the change in weather and Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Passage through Sevilla FC
The diamond in the rough was discovered for the first time by the technical director of the Peloteros de Herrera Soccer School. His name is Jordi, he was born in Tarrasa and he is from Barca. Son of a family from Herrera that emigrated to Catalonia, Jordi Figueroa arrived in Herrera “more or less with the age of Ansu Fati”. He already had soccer in his veins. “They say that in their country balls were made by assembling socks.” He jokes with the demarcation of that child who arrived in November 2009, just seven years old. “The best thing was to put him as a goalkeeper, because if not, he wouldn’t have started”.
He spent a year in the lower echelons of SevillaHe returned to Herrera and traveled to Barcelona with his brother Brahima. For being the most inexperienced, he had the honor of lighting the new Masia facilities. In Herrera, the family lived on Antonio Machado street and Ansu was a student at the Nuestra Senora de los Dolores school.
Aware of his faculties, in order not to slow down his development, Figueroa ranked him in a higher category than his age, while at school they enrolled him in a lower grade . “When I arrived I didn’t speak Spanish.” In Herrera the Genil accent is spoken. They say that disputes over land and borders created differences between the speech of the marquisate of Estepa, a municipality from which Herrera became independent in 1851, and the Duchy of Osuna.
Ansu Fati made his debut for Barca at the Camp Nou against Betis (August 25). Where they did not miss it was in the Pena Barcelonista de Herrera , which was founded on August 18, 2015 and obtained the minutes of the club on July 16, 2016. “We were born as a result of the second treble, that of Luis Enrique,” he says Andres Carrillo, president of the sentence. He was born on March 11, 1982, the year of the World Cup in Spain, and became a Barca player at the age of eight “watching a Copa del Rey final on TV in which Barca beat Madrid with goals from Amor and Salinas. He was eight years old and since then … ”.
The president of the Blaugrana penalty–in the Sierra Sur there are also in El Rubio and Casariche– he runs a bookstore named after tango, Naranjo en Flor. “We started eleven partners and we are already 32”. Celebrate the emergence of the new idol.
“I know him from hello and goodbye. We are not going to go crazy. We will continue to be Pena Barcelonista de Herrera . Imagine that at the age of 25 or 26 this boy is taken by petrodollars to Manchester City or Manchester United”. Barcelonistas del Sur, in the wake of Gallego and Migueli, have Ricardo Serna as their ambassador, who played for the two teams that face each other tonight.
Marinaleda
The Seville-Baena bus has a stop in Herrera, next to the church of the Immaculate Conception that appeared decked out for the procession that took place yesterday in honor of the Virgen del Rosario. The tour goes through milestones of Sevilla: Arahal, homeland of Manolo Jimenez , World Cup player in Italy 90; Osuna, birthplace of Francisco Lopez Alfaro, who marked Platini in the final of the European Championship in France in 1984. Herrera is 10 kilometers from Marinaleda and eight from Puente Genil, where Poli was born, a Valencia footballer who played only one game in the Spanish team, but it was against England with the task of marking Bobby Charlton.
bori fati, the soccer player’s father, was the first to arrive. They say that he tried his luck in Portugal but he heard about a town, Marinaleda, where there were cooperatives and they distributed housing. “He showed up at City Hall saying I’m here with my hands and I need to eat,” says Antonio Sanchez, a former day laborer for Martin de la Jara, now a resident of Alameda.
“I coincided with Ansu Fati’s father in some mobilizations, that of the Yeguada del Ejercito, the march for dignity.” Sanchez GordilloHe denied that the Guinean was his driver, because he does not believe in easements. “But it is true,” Antonio clarifies, “that the mayor of Marinaleda has been the target of attacks, they painted his house calling him a pig or a communist. There is always someone in town who offers to accompany him because he has no meat. And for a while this man did.”
The family has gone with the young footballer to Barcelona to experience his debut, his first goal against Osasuna – the youngest to achieve it in Barca’s history – and a very promising future where the other rivals would benefit from it, as his discoverer, who played goalkeeper. “The best thing about Ansu is that he is still a normal boy; there are boys who know they are good and become selfish; He never looked down on others.”
Jordi points it out in a line-up, ten boys and one girl, Marina, in a game they played in El Saucejo. He started playing in the training fields next to the Herrera velodrome. He has his poster next to that of Antonito , another player who plays for Valladolid.
The PP beat the PSOE 7-6 in the municipal elections on May 26. Absolute majority. Isabel Roldan and her company partner Ana Belen Jurado, Personnel delegate, pose next to the Sevillista penalty. La Pena Betica is on Calle Estepa , just in front of the house where tricorns are still being made for the Civil Guard. The Sports delegate came to greet Ansu Fation his last visit to Herrera. “It was after he was already famous, he came to a soccer player’s wedding.”
The mayor of Marinaleda found Ansu Fati’s father a job driving the garbage truck in Herrera. They have also seen him working on the AVE works. “He is a guy who never goes unnoticed,” says the Sports delegate. “He really likes fashion, sometimes he would go out in the street with colorful shoes. He has been very involved in Holy Week in Herrera. They say that he has come out of costalero”.
In Herrera there is Barcelonista sorrow and Madridista sorrow. “We get along well, but the president is funny,” says Andres Carrillo of the rival penalty. “Recently he came out in the Jugones saying that Ansu Fati was a Madridista”. The Guinean, trained in that confederation of Peloteros de la Sierra Sur, the Tempranillo route, where they occupied farms and claimed pits, has changed wages for days. Journeyman who has opened a gap between media giants like Messi, Griezzman and Luis Suarez.
Herrera was successively Cortijo, Puebla, Place and Municipality. The first population centers arose between 1511 and 1514. In August 1559 Philip II sold the farmhouse to the Genoese banker Adan Centurion. In 1631, the town council began a repopulation of the farmhouse , “parceling and leasing its pasture”, reads an official document, “so that the money it rented could pay for the separatist wars of Portugal and Catalonia”.
in Aguadulcethere is a Diamantino Garcia street. Estepa did not produce any renowned soccer player, but the first president of the Board to come out of the polls, Rafael Escuredo , in the middle of the World Cup in Spain. The year in which the president of the Pena Barcelonista de Herrera was born, as the surname of Don Helenio, who trained both teams.
At the bus station there is a vehicle from the Olmedo company, with offices in Osuna and El Rubio, which together evoke Alberti’s Ode to Platko , the verses to that blonde from Hungary who played goalkeeper at Barca, a position where many defenders Rivals would like to see Ansu Fati.
