from the station of Atocha, which, on the morning of 11 March 2004, was hit by the terrorist attacks that left 199 people dead, another 1,800 injured and sent shock waves across the country and the rest of Europe. A train leaves Platform Nine every fifteen minutes. Aboard are commuters, students, workers and many immigrants who live on the city limits. Orcasitas, Zarzaquemada … the stations pass by one after the other. High-rise housing projects, neglected spaces, intersecting motorways piled on top of each other, small residential houses, graffiti on abandoned walls, planes flying low as they come in to land at Barajas airport, shopping centres and some shanty towns. Leganés, Parque Polvoranca, La Serna … and then, Fuenlabrada Central.
Not far from the station exit is the Town Hall, a modern complex of steel, cement and glass, which can be identified by a series of horizontal yellow lozenge shapes in-between each floor. It looks onto an enormous square with a fountain occupying the centre, around which are seated several old people. Manolo Robles, aged 56, socialist, mayor since 2002 and local councillor since 1983, is a confirmed
madridista
(fan of Real Madrid). But he adores El Niño. He saw him play many years ago, when Fernando was just a boy and taking his first steps in the Atlético Madrid junior sides.The mayor also has a son who, when he was that age, enjoyed playing football but hasn’t become a champion like Torres.
Around that time, by chance, he bumped into Fernando’s parents in the Colegio Amorós school in Carabanchel and spent some time chatting to them. He’s proud that his local administration has officially recognised El Niño: ‘He’s the city’s most important sporting figure, because he grew up here and started playing football here, because people think of him as their neighbour, even if, for some years, neither he nor his family have lived in Fuenlabrada,’ says Robles in his second-floor Town Hall office. Large windows behind him depict the town he governs. ‘El Niño is very much loved here and even more since his goal in Euro 2008. He’s very well-known internationally and has put our town on the world map. Only the other day, I did an interview for a radio station in Guatemala. The first thing they asked me about was Fernando.’ A 25-year-old, whose name the municipality will use for a new 90,000-square metre sporting complex containing football pitches, tennis courts, athletics tracks and a swimming pool. ‘It will be ready in 2010 and we hope that Torres can inaugurate it,’ explains the mayor.
But what was Fuenlabrada like and what is it like today?
‘In 1973, it was a rural town of 7,000 inhabitants. But in the final years of the Franco dictatorship, there was a lot of property speculation. They gave thousands of permits to build and by 1979, we had a population of 57,000. The town grew chaotically without any proper urban development plan. In the 1980s, Fuenlabrada was the subject of a major internal migration process. Lots of young people came from (the Spanish regions of) Andalucía, Galicia, Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha, looking for work and a place to live. They settled here, next to a small community of Polish immigrants.
‘In 1995, we were witness to a wave of immigration from the Maghreb region and then from Latin America at the end of the 1990s. Today, Fuenlabrada has 209,102 inhabitants, 15 per cent of whom are immigrants from outside the European Union. It’s the fourth biggest city in the Madrid region in terms of population. It accounts for 25 per cent of the region’s industry, above all furniture-making and metallurgy. We’ve got 22 industrial estates and 30 per cent of the region’s small and medium-sized businesses.
‘In the last decade, we have greatly improved the residents’ quality of life. In terms of transport and communications infrastructure, thanks to new roads, the regional
Cercanías
train network and the metro, Fuenlabrada is
Not far from the station exit is the Town Hall, a modern complex of steel, cement and glass, which can be identified by a series of horizontal yellow lozenge shapes in-between each floor. It looks onto an enormous square with a fountain occupying the centre, around which are seated several old people. Manolo Robles, aged 56, socialist, mayor since 2002 and local councillor since 1983, is a confirmed
madridista
(fan of Real Madrid). But he adores El Niño. He saw him play many years ago, when Fernando was just a boy and taking his first steps in the Atlético Madrid junior sides.The mayor also has a son who, when he was that age, enjoyed playing football but hasn’t become a champion like Torres.
Around that time, by chance, he bumped into Fernando’s parents in the Colegio Amorós school in Carabanchel and spent some time chatting to them. He’s proud that his local administration has officially recognised El Niño: ‘He’s the city’s most important sporting figure, because he grew up here and started playing football here, because people think of him as their neighbour, even if, for some years, neither he nor his family have lived in Fuenlabrada,’ says Robles in his second-floor Town Hall office. Large windows behind him depict the town he governs. ‘El Niño is very much loved here and even more since his goal in Euro 2008. He’s very well-known internationally and has put our town on the world map. Only the other day, I did an interview for a radio station in Guatemala. The first thing they asked me about was Fernando.’ A 25-year-old, whose name the municipality will use for a new 90,000-square metre sporting complex containing football pitches, tennis courts, athletics tracks and a swimming pool. ‘It will be ready in 2010 and we hope that Torres can inaugurate it,’ explains the mayor.
But what was Fuenlabrada like and what is it like today?
‘In 1973, it was a rural town of 7,000 inhabitants. But in the final years of the Franco dictatorship, there was a lot of property speculation. They gave thousands of permits to build and by 1979, we had a population of 57,000. The town grew chaotically without any proper urban development plan. In the 1980s, Fuenlabrada was the subject of a major internal migration process. Lots of young people came from (the Spanish regions of) Andalucía, Galicia, Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha, looking for work and a place to live. They settled here, next to a small community of Polish immigrants.
‘In 1995, we were witness to a wave of immigration from the Maghreb region and then from Latin America at the end of the 1990s. Today, Fuenlabrada has 209,102 inhabitants, 15 per cent of whom are immigrants from outside the European Union. It’s the fourth biggest city in the Madrid region in terms of population. It accounts for 25 per cent of the region’s industry, above all furniture-making and metallurgy. We’ve got 22 industrial estates and 30 per cent of the region’s small and medium-sized businesses.
‘In the last decade, we have greatly improved the residents’ quality of life. In terms of transport and communications infrastructure, thanks to new roads, the regional
Cercanías
train network and the metro, Fuenlabrada is
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