Spain World Cup team receives hero's welcome

World Cup triumph brings Spaniards together

Spain's World Cup-winning team has arrived home for a massive celebration, including a meeting with the Spanish king and prime minister and an open-air bus ride through Madrid's historic city center.

The team, which beat the Netherlands 1-0 in extra time in Johannesburg for Spain's first World Cup title, arrived at Madrid's international airport on Monday evening.

The Spanish Football Federation says players will rest in an airport hotel before meeting King Juan Carlos. Then they will be congratulated by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, and embark on a 3-mile bus ride among masses of cheering Spaniards, The Associated Press reported.

Victory unites Spaniards

“Yo soy espanol, espanol, espanol!” As the buzzer sounded in Johannesburg on the final match of the 2010 World Cup, an entire city 5,000 miles away burst spontaneously into song. From the shirtless kids taking a celebratory jump into the Cibeles fountain to the old men crowded around a 13-inch TV set at their fluorescent-lit corner bar, all of Madrid, it seemed, was chanting the same joyful (if annoyingly repetitive) lyrics. But perhaps no one in the Spanish capital sang with more fervor than Mahbubul Alam. Watching the game through the window of a café in the Lavapiés neighborhood, his entire body shook as he gleefully belted out the words the whole city was singing: “I am Spanish, Spanish, Spanish!” The fact that Alam is Bangladeshi hardly seemed to matter, TIME Magazine reported.

Every World Cup has its stories, but for Spain this year's competition was especially ripe with overarching narratives. From the historically enlightening (some 500 years after the Duke of Alba first crushed the Dutch revolt, the Spanish again take on the House of Orange) to the classically inspiring (after decades of dashed hopes, a team of golden boys finally makes good on its promise), to the compellingly weird (muchas gracias to the tentacled pulpo Paul), Spain's 2010 World Cup has been about far more than just goals and penalties.

Of all the stories, the nationalist one has received the most attention. In a country where the provinces of Catalonia and the Basque country - each with its own language and heritage - strive for ever greater autonomy from the central government in Madrid, soccer has long been an arena for symbolic politics. The famously vicious rivalry between Barca (pointed slogan: “More than a team”) and Real Madrid derives in large part from the fact that support for the Barcelona team was one of the few means that Catalans had during the 40 years of Franco's dictatorship to express their regional identity (Franco was a big Madrid fan). And many Catalans, who dream of one day fielding their own team at the World Cup, have been loath to support any team bearing the name of Spain.

This year, however, with five members of the Spanish team from Catalonia, things were different. It's true that only the day before the final, Barcelona held a massive demonstration (anywhere from 60,000 to 1.1 million people attended - participation counts, like so much in this country, are politically determined) to protest a recent decision by Spain's constitutional court that declared that the region, although entitled to an extensive degree of autonomy, did not have the legal right to call itself a nation nor to privilege the Catalan language over Spanish. But sport, it seems, beats out even the most fervent politics. On the night of the final game, another 75,000 - maybe they had also come out the day before - turned up to watch the game on a giant screen that the municipal government of Barcelona had erected outdoors for the first time. When Andres Iniesta scored the game's sole goal, deep in overtime, the Barcelona crowd - many of whose members were draped in the Spanish flag -- erupted in joy.

Meanwhile, in Lavapies, another of the new Spain's identity stories was unwinding. One of Madrid's most ethnically diverse neighborhoods, it's the place where the massive influx of immigrants into Spain in the past two decades is most evident. Chinese wholesale shops press up against Moroccan butchers and Peruvian women in long black skirts buy fruit from the Senegalese grocer on the corner. On Sunday night, however, it was a sea of homogeneity - one red shirt after another. Jose Romero, an immigrant from Ecuador, had even painted his normally black-and-white dog Spot with the Spanish colors for the occasion.

Seated outside with friends, Azhar Abbas, from Pakistan, was ecstatic before the game even began. With a red-and-yellow scarf tied around his neck, and a Spanish flag emerging from his collar, he was sure Spain would win because it was such a good country. “It's not like Germany or Italy where there's discrimination,” he said. “Here there's no difference between Spaniards and foreigners.” And just in case ethnic tolerance wasn't enough to guarantee victory, he added, “I went to the mosque today and prayed for Fernando Torres.”

They were praying at the Boabab, an African restaurant up the street, when Spain's goalkeeper Iker Casillas blocked the Dutch forward Arjen Robben's shot. Together with a handful of Bangladeshis, one Chinese woman and a couple of native-born Spaniards, a half-dozen red-shirted Senegalese - all of them glued to the restaurant's television set - screamed in outrage when Dutch midfielder Nigel de Jong's foot connected with Spanish midfielder Xabi Alonso's chest. In unison, albeit in several different accents, they shouted obscenities at the referee.

The scene was much the same at Hasan Keyf's kebab restaurant around the corner. At one point during the evening, the 20 young Moroccan men sipping Fantas at tables draped in Spanish flags broke spontaneously into a chorus of “Viva Espana.” “They're gods of the game,” said Mohammed Dauud, in reference to the Spanish team. The 22-year-old had immigrated by himself to Spain from Morocco when he was just 12, and the intervening years explain, he says, his loyalty to the Spanish team. “This is where I live, who I am now,” he said. “Of course, Spain is going to be my team.” Asked if the same logic meant he was also a supporter of Real Madrid, however, Dauud demurred. “Are you crazy?” he said, shaking his head. “I'm a Barca fan.”

Photo: Spain's captain Iker Casillas (front) holds the World Cup trophy next to Spain's coach Vicente del Bosque (C) and Spain's Gerard Pique (L) after arriving at Madrid's Barajas airport on July 12, 2010. (Reuters photo)

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