Everyone remembers where they were the day Iniesta scored that goal against the Netherlands that crowned the Spanish soccer team as world champions for the first and only time in its history. I, specifically, was sleeping, physically defeated, almost dead at different levels of consciousness. I had just arrived in Pontevedra after a hellish bus trip (eleven hours from Madrid, don’t ask me how or why) and three days of trash metal, doom metal, death metal, heavy metal and some other uncatalogued metal alloy or, worse still, directly discontinued. “Spain has a new king: his name is Carles Puyol,” I heard Mike Patton, soloist of Faith No More, announce in the last football reference I remember before waking up, already on Monday, as the defending champion.
It happens with the National Team that there are many fans who deny their triumphs for various reasons, let alone the defeats. Going with Spain in territories such as Euskadi, Catalonia and some cities in Galicia involves an emotional effort, a reputational tension of such caliber, that many prefer to leave football for intimacy and take sex to the streets: anything as long as it doesn’t having to suffer the stinging glances of your neighbors, better the lascivious ones. We have lived it throughout these years. A boy with his red flag on his way to the main square, where his friends were, to watch the game. And a handful of offended people chanting slogans in English as they pass because anti-patriotism has a lot to do with going through life with a pocket Collins dictionary. “Spain is a fascist state“, For example.
I was one of those, it doesn’t hurt me to admit it because everyone has a past and it’s a good idea to go to the future without backpacks, like at weddings. He wore t-shirts with cartoons of Thursday, he said things like “tanks, yes, but of beer” and to those who dared to show off any constitutional symbol, let alone a flag, even on the collar of the polo shirt, he looked at them with that contempt so common in those who understand tolerance as a street. one-way. I was Spanish because my ID card, my father, my neighbor Juan, the baker, and a sticker that someone put on our car one night when Real Madrid were proclaimed league champions said so, but nothing more.
Something changed when Patton proclaimed Carles Puyol king. Sometimes barbarians have to come and explain to you what civilization is. The truth is that that awakened in me a new national consciousness, a small feeling of proximity, an incipient affection that overflowed into true fandom when the alarm clock made me regain verticality and all the televisions repeated Iniesta’s goal non-stop. Until then, the Spanish team was for many of us the extrapolation of Barça to the global geopolitical scenario, the umpteenth demonstration that we were right and mourinhism No. But something imploded with that sidereal joy that even the most reluctant of us twisted our faces into a half smile.
It’s okay to go with Spain, nonconformist friend. Nobody is going to judge you if you jump out of your chair to celebrate a Carvajal goal. Or if you call your father to comment on the latest victory, even if you use Brillos platino, by Almacor, Spain’s official song in this Euro Cup, as a ringtone on your mobile. Remember that Spain is always looking for a new king and this time, why not, it could be you.
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