Rayo Vallecano, in the fifth episode of ‘Illustrated Hooligans’

Vallecas is a working-class, rebellious, vindictive neighborhood. In Vallecas, values ​​are taken care of, you live with medium or low income, you sing To the weapons. You come to Vallecas to look for a future, to live your whole life or to meet in a rock and end up starting a family. Like the parents of Quique Peinado, author of ‘A las armas’, the book about Rayo Vallecano that he wrote for Illustrated Hooligans, the KO collection of Books.

KO Productions, Podium Podcast and AS Audio Eight books in the collection have been adapted to the sound format, and one of those selected has been that of the journalist from Vallecano. Quique Peinado accompanies Lucía Taboada, director and presenter from the podcast Hooligans Ilustrados, in the fifth installment of this podcast that every Monday it has premiered a new episode since last September 20, and that He still has three more premieres ahead of him until next Monday, November 8.

For the author, “To the weapons It is a battle cry that is sung in Vallecas. It is said: “To arms, we are from Vallecas and we are going to win.” It is the perfect way to define the spirit of ‘rayismo’, which is that spirit not only warrior and fighter, but in the old way. It has nothing to do with violence. It does have to do with an old way, a way that is already out of circulation, even romantic, of defending an idea, which in this case is the idea of ​​Rayo Vallecano, which modern football wants to destroy ”. Besides book and song, To the weapons is one of the episodes that make up this serial documental sound.

Its premiere last Monday coincides with the great moment of a Rayo that has not been able to start the season better: sixth in the standings, with 16 points out of 27 possible. But Quique, in response to AS, does not lose focus: “The normal thing is that Rayo falls from the positions in which it is. What we are doing now is very good because you are accumulating points to collect what you need to save yourself. The team is very solid (…) We have beaten all those who are below. And, in addition, we have deserved to win all the games and I sincerely believe that, if Falcao I would have been in San Sebastián, we won that game ”.

Praise the solidity achieved by Iraola: “The team is very good, it is very solid and has strengthened very well at the end of the market, when the team was already done. The very broad base is still the Second team that rose. Of course Iraola is a coach who works the teams very well. It is true that the Spanish league, taking into account that those at the top are no longer very fierce people, and that in the setback that Spanish football is suffering There are many teams that can end up sneaking in because the thing has been equalized below, it can be good for Rayo to be a time up. Like Rayo, other teams that were not expected up there. But, for the Ray, logic says that it will be a little while and then things will change. I trust that we will save ourselves. When I saw the team that was made, and that the reinforcements took so long to arrive, I didn’t give a penny ”.

Madridista childhood, vallecana life

From the southeast of Madrid, vallecano for life, but with a few early years of Madridista illusions, Peinado recounts in this episode of Hooligans Ilustrados numerous memories and arguments of his passion for Rayo and soccer. “Until I was 10-11 years old, Rayo was my second team. I was from Madrid (…) Estudiantes was what killed Real Madrid for me ”. Not only the Estu: stepping on the Rayo field for the first time with his uncle became no less than a moment of fascination and a reason to become the team.

In conversation with Taboada, he questions how the children of a team are made today. His memories lead him to jump into the field with his uncle (prohibited), enter with children’s tickets (withdrawn) or enter with an adult relative (denied). Given the drop in interest that is assumed in young people, there is a clear reason: “The vast majority of children cannot go to football because it is very expensive”.

Another voice that shows his ‘rayismo’ during the episode is that of Míchel Sánchez, who had his team and his home in Vallecas, figuratively and without it. Recalling how much it has served him to come from that neighborhood, carrying humility, work, companionship and solidarity as a flag, it does not happen to bring to the fore an era that, by agreement and paths of the Ruiz Mateos, He occupied a place in a school with little connection with the Vallecano spirit.

Impossible to ask Míchel Sánchez for moments of his life without going through the UEFA Cup played by Rayo in the 2000-2001 season. By then, they eliminated a Girondins of Bordeaux who led the French championship, made the front page in The team and they regretted that the fans could not enjoy the Rayo-Liverpool that was presupposed. What they did celebrate was the goal that Míchel rescues with Quique and Lucía.

El Tamudazo, a black doorman in the nineties and the local liturgy

The episode is not without references; the most recent, Raúl Tamudo and that May 13, 2012 that above all soccer fan will always be presented as the day of ‘El Tamudazo’. “To be from Vallecas it is enough to live there”, presents Lucía; and to be from Rayo it is enough to recognize that ‘El Tamudazo’ steals the limelight and mysticism from any other moment lived in the Vallecas Stadium.

At Rayo there are always players who come and go. “In his day Hugo Sanchez O pad O Ricardo Gallego… There are many players who, it happened before, came to retire to Rayo. We have always been that. What seems to me with Falcao is that he does not come to retire to Rayo, he is in shape to play a World Cup. For us it will be a blessing. There have been many crazy players who have played at Rayo, I couldn’t tell you just three because there are three hundred thousand ”.

At Rayo there have always been players that nobody expected. “Throughout the history of Rayo, there are many very surprising people who have passed through the club. We have had a Chinese player who came because a sponsor had to… we had to have a Chinese player, who was also not bad. He played a cup game and it seems to me that it was not bad. Within what could be signed, the player was fine. We have had a player from Saudi Arabia, or from I do not know where, for another ‘negotiate’ that he has done The press and we had a player there who appeared there, he never played, but he has worn our shirt ”.

Lightning will rarely become a team of proper names. Although there are some who remain linked to their identity, such as Wilfred Agbonavbare: Willy. The Nigerian goalkeeper represented a time and a place, “he was a target of racism, the emblem of the Ray with which I grew up”, he gave meaning to his career within Vallecas. Quique Peinado adds two sentences in the podcast: “El Rayo took advantage of Willy a lot” and “It is very difficult to explain now what it was like to have a black goalkeeper in the nineties.”

‘A las armas’ would never have been written without Míchel, without Tamudo, without Willy and without having gone down to the grass when his uncle decided to help him jump the fence to feel his stadium, a hobby and a team. No moment of fascination can be compared to walking down to the grass, feeling the immensity of the lights and overshadowing you with the chants of the fans. As a child, Quique took a piece of the Vallecas rug, but took the pride of an entire town.

Soccer and boxing, national sports in Vallecas

A town that has two national sports: football and noble art. The love of Rayo is not only in Vallecas. “There are more Rayo members from outside Vallecas than from Vallecas,” says Peinado. “Only the people save the people, only the fans save the club,” concludes Taboada. Boxing has also saved this town and this neighborhood.

Soccer and boxing, two non-negotiable passions for Quique Peinado, without shame to claim it: “It is not difficult for me to justify either of those two hobbies. I apply moral or intellectual superiority: if you are not able to understand it, the problem is not mine, the problem is yours. If a man comes to me and says “I really like opera” and I don’t understand it, the one who is a crook is me, it’s not him. And in this, three-quarters of the same. You may not like boxing, but if you don’t understand that I like it or that you don’t understand that, according to what people, according to what profile, they might like football or boxing, you have the problem. So my moral or intellectual superiority, over those who say they don’t understand that I like football or boxing ”.

The stamp AS Audio appears in one of the sound works in Spanish that best deals with this sport, the memories that every fan has around a ball and the number of stories that have emerged with football. For follow all the news of this serial and all the podcasts of the sound space of Diario AS, the new profiles on social networks are now available: @AsAudio on Twitter and Facebook, and @DiarioAsAudio on Instagram.

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