BARCELONA—As I awoke this morning from uneasy dreams, it took me a couple of minutes to figure out exactly where I was, and how I’d gotten here. Turns out I was on the couch of my man in Barca, Lizou.
“David, I’ve just had the strangest dream. I dreamed that Spain beat the Germans, and we partied in the streets of Barcelona till dawn.”?
For only the second time, Spain are champions of Europe. But judging from the wild celebrations that followed Sunday’s 1-0 victory over the Germans in Vienna, the victory songs somehow haven’t gathered too much dust in the intervening 44 years. They sang them all, and then sang a few more, and are probably still singing them out there somewhere, though I’ll be damned if I’m going to leave the apartment to find them with this pounding headache I’m nursing.
Lizou and I, and two handfuls of other friends, crammed into a cerveceria in Nou Barris, a fairly working-class neighbourhood in the northeast end of town. I don’t speak Spanish, and not a soul at the bar was speaking English, other than my heroic translator, so once the game kicked off, I was without distractions and free to concentrate the entirety of my attention on the television stationed just above the cigarette dispenser and the video lottery terminal.
“Without distractions”? might be pushing it, actually. The guys we were with proceeded to order, at fairly regular 10 minute intervals throughout Spain’s dominating performance, every tapas dish on the menu – Lizou and I had arrived two hours before kickoff to stake out the seats, and were already several plates deep by the time our comrades arrived. So the match was punctuated by ham, and fried potatoes, and olives, and more ham, and some sort of crazy potato pie. Oh, and lots of Estrella Damm, a Spanish pilsner.
After absorbing and surviving the Germans’ opening blitz, the Spaniards went on the attack, as they’ve done all tournament long. And after a couple near misses, one well saved by Lehmann off a deflection from a defender and another smacking the post off the head of Torres, the footballing gods, who have been overwhelmingly fair and just over the past three weeks, rewarded the Roja once again in the 33rd minute.
This, the only goal of the match, will be replayed in Spain till the end of time, or at least as long as televisions roam the earth – the mere sight of Fernando Torres, who will never again in his lifetime have to pick up a tab in this country, blasting past Philipp Lahm and chipping the ball over Jens Lehmann will bring grown men to tears well into the next century.
With a 1-0 lead, the Spaniards refused to go into a defensive shell. They were frankly unlucky not to have scored three or four goals, but the 1-0 scoreline meant that the Spaniards in the bar remained tense to the very end. After having experienced the horror of seeing seconds fly off the clock too quickly in France’s two losses (I believe I was referred to as “the French jinx”? throughout most of the match), this was an entirely different experience: I know people say it all the time, but the clock literally seemed to be running at half-speed. Still, as we hit 60 minutes, and then 70, the chants gained in intensity, we started bashing our beer glasses against the table. For a country with a bit of a major-tournament-blowing complex, this was surprising stuff. But the form of the Spanish side over the past three weeks has been such that you just knew – and it didn’t help Germany’s cause that most of the last twenty minutes was spent watching the Spaniards pass the ball through the midfield.
When the final whistle blew, there were high fives, hugs, kisses – I may have kissed one or two old Spanish men, I can’t really remember – and cries of “Campeoooooooones! Campeooooooones!”? After settling an impressive bar tab and waiting for captain Iker Casillas (“San Iker”? – Saint Iker) to hoist la copa, we hit the streets. Car horns blaring, children hanging out of back-seat windows, flags covering everything in sight. It was a party. The metro was equally rambunctious as we made our way to the Plaza de Cataluña and the Canaletes fountain, where shirtless teenagers hung from lampposts, the streets were shut down, fireworks blasted from every direction, bright red flares illuminated the onlookers on every streetside balcony, a dude on top of a phone booth juggled a ball on his head, and passionate chants filled the air. It was quite a scene.
We bought beers from a south Asian man selling cans of Estrella at two euros a pop, and wandered around for a good while, while Lizou tried to get through to his Spanish father in Toronto. “Nope, the line’s still busy.”?
It was a wild, red scene, all the more surprising because in Barcelona, the capital of Catalan country, the Roja were seen and despised for years and years as a symbol of Franco’s Spain. Many Spaniards I talked to last night felt that Spain’s run in this tournament had been a cathartic experience of healing, and it crested on the streets of Barcelona last night. Say what you will about sports being trivial or fleeting, but for reasons that a greater man than I might be able to articulate, these sorts of things happen once in a while. Sometimes, a game is more than a game, and a goal is more than a goal.
We hopped around the city till it was almost light out – drinking Ballantine’s and Coke, Bolivian fire whiskey, Puerto Rican danger beers. Honestly, I don’t remember a lot of it, though at one point, during a wild hiccuping fit, I tumbled off the front stoop of the MACBA with kebab in hand – I have the bruises and the stained jeans to prove it. Like James Murphy says, we partied like they do it here in Spain, where they go all night. And after the last Olé had been sung, we apparently came home.
I woke up this morning, sucked down ten glasses of water, and told Lizou about the crazy dream I’d had.
“I had the same dream!”? he said. “The exact same dream.”?
We loaded up the clip of Fernando Torres’s goal on YouTube, before UEFA’d pulled it down (here’s the goal, though not from the best camera angle). We must have watched it 100 times. It gets better every time you see it – that deft first touch, just hard enough to reroute Lahm but soft enough to keep the ball from reaching Lehmann; the inside-outside move on Lahm; Torres streaking right past the defender, swimming with his arm but not fouling him; looking up, seeing Lehmann laid out in front of him, and chipping it left, across his body; the ball bouncing towards the corner, curling away, but ultimately rippling the twine just inside the post; Lehmann on the ground, Lahm hanging his head (“I want to get that shot on a poster,”? says Lizou). Torres sliding into the corner, and being mobbed by his red-clad teammates.
I could watch that goal another hundred times. I probably will.
But right now, it’s time for a siesta.
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