Spanish Football Player Lamine Yamal Waved Palestine’s Flag After Winning Spain’s La Liga Title
Yamal’s gesture quickly went viral as an apparent act of solidarity with the Palestinian people against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
18-year-old Spanish football star Lamine Yamal waved Palestine’s flag during his club La Liga championship title celebration parade.
On Sunday, May 10, Yamal’s club FC Barcelona defeated Real Madrid 2-0, winning the Spanish league La Liga title.
During victory celebrations on Monday, May 11, Yamal, one of the best football players in Spain and the world, spotted a fan waving Palestine’s flag near the team’s bus.
Yamal then motioned for the fan to bring it forward and carried the flag while riding on the open-deck bus in front of about 750,000 fans attending the celebration.
Yamal’s gesture quickly went viral as an apparent act of solidarity with the Palestinian people against Israel’s genocide in Gaza that killed more than 72,000 Palestinians, drawing widespread reaction from people online.
“A teenager has more spine than every G7 head of state combined.” One person wrote on X. “While the political class writes blank checks for bombing of children, the kid won the league and used his platform to expose Israel's war crimes.”
“From Palestine… thank you, Lamine Yamal,” the Palestine Football Association wrote on X.
“Thank you for this gesture of humanity,” the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement in Madrid wrote on X. “Sport has the power to make visible what the world must not forget.”
“You cannot imagine how much this love, this care, and this solidarity mean to us… the feeling that we still matter in this world,” another person from Gaza wrote on X.
Some Israeli Barcelona fans appeared to be unhappy with Yamal’s actions, threatening to burn and cut their jerseys.
Barcelona’s coach Hansi Flick told reporters he spoke to Yamal after the incident and told him, “If you want to do that, it’s your decision, you’re old enough.”
This was not the first time Yamal had used his platform on a political issue.
Earlier, in March, he publicly condemned Spanish football fans chanting anti-Muslim slurs during a friendly match between Spain and Egypt, saying, “to use religion as a way of mocking others inside a stadium is ignorant and racist."
Cherry Mohamed
Sofia Hou
