Last week, a pleasant after-dinner conversation was interrupted by one of those topics of conversation capable of breaking any moment of peace and joy: FC Barcelona. My interlocutor, in his early thirties and a fan of that club like myself, stated without shame that, until Messi’s arrival, we had always been in the shit. I have a rule of not arguing with people who were not in this world when The Smiths released their debut album, and neither with those who were already among the living when it was released. The twilight of the gods. It is a defence mechanism to avoid being caught in a generational mismatch that cannot be resolved. But that day, either because of the wine or because I had not had a fight with anyone for weeks – it is horribly hot in Madrid – I decided to respond. The fury of generation X fell upon that young man. I told him that my grandfather remembered Kubala, that Migueli was my grandmother’s favourite. That, when I was born, I was taken to the club’s training camp to be blessed by Johan Cruyff (my mother keeps the photo). I even told him about Archibald and Venables; about the day at Wembley and Sampdoria. Obviously, everything went in one ear and out the other. Until I got to Rijkaard. Since that was already familiar to him, he intervened, granting the Dutchman some credit. Seeing the door half open, I reminded him that without the Barça coached by Cruyff, the one with the five leagues, the one with Messi and Guardiola (coach) would never have existed. Failure. He denied it without batting an eyelid. “Look, kid, Guardiola’s Barça is Oasis, but Cruyff’s Barça was the Beatles,” I said, thinking that my fit of temper would put an end to the dispute. “I prefer Oasis,” he replied. And he killed me.
I had to agree with him. Partly because he was right —even if this was irrelevant— and secondly because, for a moment, I was transported back to those years of youth when my elders, along with many of those born in the seventies, convinced me that everything good had already been done, that if we achieved something useful, it would be thanks to what they had achieved before. From the welfare state or the Transition to Bob Dylan, passing through the saga of The GodfatherCamus and Sartre. I didn’t want for anything in the world to become that person born the year they were released. Strangers on a Train who spends 20 years absorbing culture and the rest of his life regurgitating that culture in bar conversations and, for a few years now, also on Facebook and Twitter. Of course, stopping in time requires an almost tantric restraint, because what your body is asking for is revenge. If I was convinced to buy Jethro Tull records or to read The Steppenwolf, I’m going to bore you until you think you urgently need to put Supergrass on Spotify and search on Filmin The red squirrel. Don’t do it. And not only because it’s ugly, but because they won’t pay any attention to you. The cultural continuum has been broken. Adamism prevails. And that’s very bad for today, because if you know enemies it’s very difficult to know how to detect friends, but very good for tomorrow, when there’s nothing left, nothing is remembered and you have to start from scratch. This pain that is felt today in the form of a song by Omar Montes will one day be useful.
