Long before the winner’s medal in East Rutherford, one of the first things Pedri did with a Barcelona pay cheque was send money back to Tenerife.

“I remember that with one of my first salaries I bought my father a car in Tenerife, one that was needed,” the 23-year-old told Televisión Canaria, in an interview carried by the Spanish daily El Español on 16 August.

Less than a month before the interview aired, he had lifted the World Cup with Spain after Ferran Torres’s extra-time goal beat Argentina 1-0 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on 19 July. What he chose to talk about first was his parents.

The money was for the parents

Talking about those early professional years, Pedri framed the earnings almost entirely as a chance to change things for his family.

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“Above all, the money you earn is for giving your parents stability, so that they stop working and can be calm,” he said.

The car in Tenerife slotted into that logic. Fernando González, Pedri’s father, is a recurring presence in the midfielder’s story. On the night Spain lifted the trophy in July, Pedri stepped away from the celebrations on the pitch to keep up a private ritual, taking a penalty against his dad, who had wanted to be a goalkeeper before family life pulled him away from football.

Barcelona was always the dream

Pedri, born in Tegueste, on Tenerife, told the interviewer he had been kicking a ball for as long as he could remember, and his father was the reason.

“For as long as I have any awareness, I have always been glued to a ball. My father instilled it in me as a small boy, always taking me to the pitch with him to play,” he said.

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The family, he added, were blunt about what it would take.

“They told me I had qualities, but they always said that without work I would not get there, not a chance,” Pedri said.

Barcelona was not one option among many. It was the option.

“I was listening to what people were telling me, but inside I was saying that Barça is where I wanted to stay,” he said.

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“For me Barça is the best there is. It is what I lived as a small boy, what I dreamed of.”

The grandfather’s supporters’ club

That devotion is not a marketing line. Pedri’s grandfather founded a Penya Blaugrana in the Canary Islands, a Barcelona supporters’ club, and the family’s fandom took root there. In an earlier interview with Televisión Canaria in May, Pedri had put the same feeling in the language of a fan first.

“I wouldn’t trade Barça for anything. For me, Barcelona is the best there is,” he told the broadcaster then.

By 2026 Pedri is one of the Barcelona captains and the axis of most of the team’s attacking play. Six years after moving from the Canary Islands to Catalonia, and weeks after being crowned world champion with Spain, the memory he reached for first was not a trophy or a debut. It was a car, in Tenerife, for the man who once drove him to training.

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