It used to be a dangerous thing to fly the ikurriña. Now, I would think, it´d take a lot of nerve - or insensitivity - to fly the flag of Spain in Spanish Euskadi. But, that´s just what a lot of people did last night after Spain won its first ever World Cup.
Even my hostess Maritxu, who has to struggle a bit to come up with something positive to say about the Spanish, readily admitted that Spain played an excellent and a thrilling game against a very worthy adversary, Holland, last night.
I watched the game on a very hard little wooden stool towards the front of a small restaurant (actually, there are no large restaurants) last night. It was a very long game. After nearly two hours, I could nurse that one glass of beer no longer, so, I got up to stretch my legs in the slight drizzle in the Plaza de la Constitución, adjacent. And that, of course, is when Spain made its winning score. The only one either team made in the entire game, every other moment of which I had witnessed as I sat on that hard little stool waiting for one of the teams to make a goal. Ah, well. I enjoyed the replays.
The family that watches fútbol together stays together.
And the despised Spanish flag made a triumphant appearance. All night long horns honked and crowds yelled. A nearby dog, perhaps abandonned for the evening by its celebrating owners, barked for hours, frightened no doubt by the explosion of fireworks and the shouting in the streets.
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