A Basque kind of glory
With Athletic Club’s “party of the century” in Bilbao and looming Basque elections, all eyes are on Euskadi.
By now I’d like to think that I’ve developed a good feel for which way the wind is blowing when it comes to public opinion in Spain.
With this year’s Copa del Rey final, however, I got it totally wrong.
Undoubtedly triggered by the football hipster hormones that Athletic Club — Bilbao’s team of Basque men (some more Basque than others) — is so effective at generating, I presumed that everyone in Spain would be willing the cup back up north to the country’s most mítico stadium for the first time in 40 years. After all, along with Liverpool’s Anfield, no other estadio is revered and romanticised in Spain as San Mamés — nicknamed La Catedral — home of The Lions.
Free of the exaggeration that pollutes everything whenever FC Barcelona or Real Madrid are involved in anything, an Athletic Club v Mallorca final was about as neutral affair as you can get. But in a country with 47 million opinions, neutrality is rarely on the menu.
This Is Athletic Club Bilbao — Basque Identity vs Modern Football — YouTube
Lured deeper into echo chambers by social media algorithms that know how to nourish my penchant for sporting sleeping giants ready to rouse from their slumber, I thought everyone else without a runner in the two-horse race would love to see the famous Gabarra cruising along bursting banks of red and white euphoria, evoking memories of when Spanish football wasn’t built to serve two teams.
Speaking to several football fans from different parts of the country, however, I realised, once again, that Spain is different.
“Fans of various club will be hoping Athletic Club win because it would mean that team who finishes seventh in La Liga would qualify for European competition,” Emilio Contreras, deputy director of Marca, told me a few days before the game. “But across the rest of the country, a large part would be cheering on Mallorca for political reasons.”
With the blinkers on, I overlooked the fact that all aspects of Spanish life are squeezed and poked by the tentacles of politics, as well as the fierce regional rivalries that exist in Spain between the haves and have nots.
The Basque Country is one of the haves.
“With a population of just 2.2 million, it is one of the most prosperous and developed parts of Spain,” wrote Michael Reid in Spain: The trials & triumphs of a modern European country. “Since the transition (to democracy), it has enjoyed the most wide-ranging autonomy of any region in the EU. The Basque government not only runs public services, its own police force (known as the Ertzaintza) and a public television station but also collects its own taxes.”
To read the rest of this piece, come join us over at La Comunidad:
A Basque kind of glory — by Brendan Boyle — La Comunidad (substack.com)
