2024-01-04 08:53:00
Lionel Messi became a symbol for all Argentines, especially for those who leave the country in search of new opportunities and new experiences. This is how Joaquín Mántaras, photographer and filmmaker of the cumbia band Los Totora, experienced it, who has an anecdote that he will not fail to tell about how his work with the star saved him from a complicated situation at an airport.
Read also: A footballer rejected the Argentine National Team and will play for Mexico: “I was not going to make the decision for Messi”
A few months ago, Mántaras embarked on a trip in which he invested all his emotion and also his savings. Upon arriving in Amsterdam, he was stranded at Immigration for four hours. When they asked him about his work, he showed that he had taken photos of Lionel Messi. As if by magic and thanks to the Argentine star, he was allowed entry into the country.
Now, the filmmaker born in Concordia spoke with TN and told how having contact with the world champion, even from afar, opened the doors of a continent for him.
Together with Los Totora, Joaquín had had the opportunity to attend Maxi Rodríguez’s farewell in Rosario, in June 2023. He not only took photos of the band, but also of the players who were part of it, including Lionel Messi, Leandro Paredes and Ángel Di María.
Joaquín Mántaras with Leandro Paredes and at Maxi Rodríguez’s farewell in Rosario. (Photos: Kindly Joaquín Mántaras)
Weeks later, the photographer got on a plane to visit friends in Denmark and tour other places in Europe for three months. “I didn’t have hotels, I didn’t have internal flights or anything, the only thing I had was the round trip ticket and the return ticket, nothing more,” he recalled.
Their flight had a stopover in Amsterdam, Netherlands. There they stopped him at Immigration. “They asked me where I was going to stay, how long and some other things that I didn’t understand because they spoke to me in English. It didn’t bother them that I didn’t have tickets or hotels,” he recalled.
“They took me to a small room that had a computer and a telephone, with a female police officer in custody,” he added. Everything became complicated when they asked him about his work: being a freelance photographer and filmmaker, that is, working on his behalf, the fellow citizen did not have any employment contract. In addition, they reviewed all of his bank accounts and the credit cards he carried.
“Later I asked myself why I didn’t tell them that I had studied at the faculty, that I am graduated, that I am an expert surveyor,” he said.
“Lionel Messi opened the door to Europe for me”
At one point, two police officers stayed inside the room where Joaquín Mántaras was giving a statement. Without an employment contract to certify his work as a photographer, without tickets to tour the continent and without hotels to stay in, the agents asked him to show something of what he had done professionally. It was his last chance since minutes before an officer had determined that he would not be able to take the next plane and that he had to return to Argentina.
“The first thing I manage to do is grab the cell phone and unlock it. I turned him around and placed him facing them. At that moment they looked at each other and started to smile,” she recalled. The wallpaper was one of the photos that she had taken of Messi two months before.
The photo that Joaquín Mántaras took of Messi and made them let him enter Europe. (Photo: Courtesy Joaquín Mántaras)
Joaquín immediately asked them if they wanted to see more photos from that day: “When I start showing them, they start laughing and making faces as if in agreement. They seemed to like it and then they changed completely.”
The agents watched images of Lionel Messi with a smile on his face, while Mántaras still did not know if they would let him continue with his trip to Denmark.
“The only thing they said was ‘Well, get your things together and leave,’” the photographer said with relief still on the surface. Regarding the weight that Messi had in his life, he stressed: “He was the one who opened the doors for me to enter Europe, because after that they treated me extremely well.”
Messi, Argentine flag in any corner of the world
Finally, Joaquín arrived in Denmark. Later, he visited other countries such as Spain, Germany, Italy, Czech Republic and Switzerland. In most of his destinations he discovered that Lionel Messi was always present, and closer than he thought. “I get on the subway in Barcelona and I see three kids, two of them with the Argentina shirt and one with Inter Miami, and I sit next to them,” he began by saying.
“I asked them who they supported in the World Cup and they said ‘Obviously for Leo’: I told them ‘But why not for Spain’; ‘We wanted Argentina to become champion because of Messi, because he deserved it, because he has been looking for it a lot,’ and that’s when I got excited,” Mántaras continued.
What the captain of the National Team generates is not only experienced among the Argentines or the Catalans who were close to him for so long in Barcelona, but also among Latin Americans in general. “In Berlin I was wearing Messi’s shirt and I feel like they’re starting to shout at me. ‘Come on,’ they told me, Look, and they were some guys from Peru and Bolivia, who started calling me because they wanted to take photos with me,” he recalled.
After his tour of the Old Continent, Mántaras returned to Argentina. As a member of the Los Totora team, he was present on December 23 at the wedding of Antonela Roccuzzo’s sister in Rosario, where he finally met Lionel Messi and was closer than he ever dreamed: the Argentine star took a group photo and Joaquín posed behind him.
Joaquín Mántaras with the Los Totora team and Lionel Messi, at the wedding of Antonela Roccuzzo’s sister. (Photo: Instagram/ @joa.mantaras)
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