Real=Spain in nation of contradictions

Most foreigners have a clear-cut image of Spain as a land of sea and sun, bullfights and flamenco, the Prado art museum and Real Madrid, one...

Most foreigners have a clear-cut image of Spain as a land of sea and sun, bullfights and flamenco, the Prado art museum and Real Madrid, one of the world’s best football clubs. Yet the apparent unity conceals a culturally and politically complex country grappling with contradictions and paradoxes which a closer look reveals to be characteristic of football as well.

More than 50 million tourists visit Spain annually, and many discover a multi-layered culture in places such as Granada’s Islamic Alhambra palace, which reveals a 800-year Moorish legacy underneath Spain’s staunch Roman Catholicism. Spanish is just one of Spain’s languages alongside smaller ones such as Catalan, Basque and Galician. Central governments try to maintain unity while Basque separatists sometime plant bombs and Catalans voice increasing demands for more autonomy. Regional tensions are present also in the world of football, which can draw hundreds of thousands of jubilant fans to the streets of the capital when Real Madrid score an important victory.

The stars of what is often described as the world’s most successful football club — Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane, David Beckham, Roberto Carlos, Raul — are household names all over the globe. The recent slump in form of Real — that has seen them go without a trophy this year — has done little to change that.

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It is difficult to imagine a more football-crazy country than Spain, where the sports dailies Marca, As, Sport and El Mundo Deportivo as well as radio programmes scrutinise every detail in the latest performance of the likes of Real Madrid or Barcelona.

Fans are organised in thousands of fan clubs known as penas, which have members from all social classes. Spanish football has a respected social status which has helped to keep hooliganism at bay. Yet while fans worship Real Madrid or Barcelona, they take little interest in the national team which will represent Spain at Euro 2004.

Experts say Spain’s real national team is Real Madrid, which has grown naturally, while the national team was created in a more artificial way. The national team does not ignite much passion in a country divided into 17 autonomous regions where people may associate nationalism with the 1939-75 dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.

The more than 6 million Catalans and over 2 million Basques want to have their own national teams in the same way as England or Scotland do; a situation which would allow them to play against the Spanish national team.

(gms/dpa 2004)

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