Hatim Azahri (Morocco, 27 years old) clearly remembers the day he fined 15 teenagers who had jumped over a school wall to enjoy a game of indoor soccer. “It was the drop of indignation that was missing due to the absence of equipment and spaces to practice sports for free,” he says. Since he arrived in Barcelona at the age of two, the Poble-sec neighborhood was his world, life passed between him and his house. But in adolescence he began to leave the neighborhood and visited youth facilities such as the one, in Gòtic, or the one, in Gràcia, “entire buildings dedicated to leisure and youth support.” It was then that he understood that something was missing in Poble-sec. Uncomfortable with the situation, Hatim got together with three friends from the neighborhood and built the association. For seven years, it has been reactivating abandoned public spaces and transforming them into sports and community infrastructures at the service of the neighborhood.
In 2019, in a neighborhood with nearly 7,000 young people between 17 and 29 years old, Hatim and three friends began looking for job and academic advice, psychological support, and municipal sports spaces for young people. They didn’t find anything in the neighborhood. “There I realized that he did not know the reality of the territory and that we had to do something,” he remembers. Through the para youth entities of Barcelona they understood that the legal tool to demand quality services was to establish themselves as an association. Until the age of 16, he explains, there are municipal resources for adolescents, but when they turn 17 the network disappears. “Young people need it. It cannot be that many only come to sleep in the neighborhood and do not live in community life,” he maintains.
The first space claimed was a municipal youth facility with labor and academic counseling services and psychological care. Shortly afterward they demanded an open-air installation. “For some it is just a stick, but for many it is what they need.” Hatim soon understood that the demand for a public space had to be supported by negotiation with the different actors in the neighborhood and the administrations: “The needs of the neighborhood and the technical language of the administrations are not compatible. It is incredible.” His role, he explains, was to translate those needs into proposals with data and evidence and with recommended companies. “We literally gave the technicians something that just had to be approved.” Before, however, there were campaigns, collecting signatures, participation in neighborhood councils and meetings with neighborhood and sports entities to build the project.
In 2022, with greater ambition, the focus was moved to the , a large and underused area at the beginning of Paral·lel avenue. “There were walls and benches, but nothing that encouraged interaction,” he recalls. After the presentation of a project prepared in coordination with local entities, the City Council invested 380,000 euros in its improvement: a calisthenics area was built and ping-pong tables were installed that are today used by families and young people.
Hatim had found a formula: listen to the needs of the neighborhood and pressure the administration to expand the spaces for coexistence. The following year, the claim was moved to , a practically disused municipal space in front of the Magic Fountain of Montjuïc. “It was used for very specific events, like car fairs; most of the time it was closed,” he explains. In a neighborhood with a sports center that could not meet all the sports demand in the territory, the place seemed ideal for practicing sports.
Before meeting with the councilor, the result was a municipal investment of 40,000 euros to rehabilitate the space with adequate flooring and sports equipment. Today it functions as a training center for different modalities and ages. David Russell, a 59-year-old Englishman, goes every Tuesday and Thursday. “You can’t find this anywhere else, it’s much more than a gym,” he says.
Jazz Gab, 32 years old, arrives from Sant Andreu to practice sports in the pavilion. “I feel like here I can integrate, meet people and socialize more,” he says. Beyond the infrastructure, the entity promotes free sports meetings of indoor soccer, basketball, volleyball, badminton and cultural projects, in addition to coordinating calendars between entities under self-management formulas. “Getting sports entities to position themselves politically is very difficult,” admits Hatim.
The success of the Italy Pavilion, with a first phase announced for the end of 2026. For the association, the project demonstrates that neighborhood organization can transform dispersed demands into concrete policies. “All neighborhoods have their needs, but we cannot accept the normalization of inequality and precariousness,” says Hatim, who concludes: “We have a very good relationship with all administrations, but we know that we must exert tension when necessary. It is doing neighborhood politics.”
