Now, let me not paint the picture that each and every madrileño lives, eats, and dies for soccer. Also, let me point out what many of you will already know: in Madrid, it's fútbol but for the ease of copy and pasting in accent marks and to establish my personal voice as an American abroad, I will retain the usage of 'soccer' with no lack of deference for the traditional name of the sport.
Political correctness taken care of, where were we?
Ah yes, correcting assumptions about the depth of the love of the sport. It's not all about the ball and the players--not by a long shot. Several girls here at the residence hall have said that many women in Madrid do not particularly love soccer; now that's just a handful of opinions from a few girls here. This is not a gender division issue; many women scream the loudest when their equipo scores a goal or feel the deepest pangs of regret when the semifinals are lost and a chance at the championship game become clear impossibilities for this season. Still, hasta luego, no?
The point is, you don't have to love soccer for the sake of soccer itself. You don't have to want to touch the grass of the keeper's box adoringly after an amazing stop or want to name your firstborn son after Messi. That the game serves primarily as a social tradition becomes quite clear after only a few weeks' stay here. You go to the games or, like the vast majority of people, to the sports bars to have a few beers, eat some tapas, cheer with friends, and simply, intrinsically, spend time with the people you care about. Soccer is for some what the dinner table is for others in that it brings us together and the result, despite the different paraphernalia accompanying, remains the same: we bond.
Last night for instance was a singularly cold night here in Madrid (little did we know it would snow the next morning). Tuesday night though it was, tired from the slog of the work day and no doubt heavy with the burden of a struggling economy, thousands poured into the tapas bars and cafes to watch the clásico-- a battle between Real Madrid and Barcelona, the most heated of sports rivalries equal to any of our own in the US (such as the historical Bears-Packers rivalry).
My friends and I pulled on coats and scarves and headed out with the rest. Nicole is a die-hard Real Madrid fan and she was determined to see every second of the 90 minute game to cheer on her men in white. Meeting up in the Plaza de Sol (the heart of the city if you recall) at 8:30pm, we had just a half an hour until the start. Nicole had a place in mind so we took another Metro after merging our whole five person group and got off at Gran Vía, the street that can best be equated with Broadway. One of the offshoots of this huge, bustling street boasted a sports bar with excellent tapas and several HD TV's. To our dismay, we arrived to find a line going out the door and a 10 euro charge per person--just to get inside.
The vote was a unanimous 'no'.
As we do so often in Spain, we began to wander. "We have thirty minutes. Surely we can find another bar with the game on," Tom, hailing from near Syndey, Australia assured the group.
In less than five minutes, just a left turn away from the original destination, we found a place called "El 13" with white Christmas lights in the window and no businesses open on either side for several hundred meters in either direction. Our first descriptor for the place was, "sketch". We sent Tom in first.
There weren't too many people inside, perhaps eight, but they were your average middle-aged Spaniards sharing a couple of beers and cozied up at a small round table just ten feet away from an HD flat. Once assured that the bar owner would be playing the game on that beautiful TV, we entrenched ourselves in the corner table, the guys on a bench built into the wall complete with black cushions, and Nicole and I in chairs at the sides of another small table, this one square.
The walls of El 13 are painted dark. There's a mural on the back wall of a chimp with his hand on his chin in a thinking sort of posture and a there's sentence painted in red above his head that I'm sure is a slanderous thing to say about any politician. Incense gives the air a kind of thickness and the entire square footage is certainly less than my garage at home.
Beers, or cañas, being only 1 euro each until 10pm only, we nonetheless ordered a round and the night began in earnest. Two mini pizzas and several more beers later, the game was on, Real Madrid had scored a goal already, and the bar was now as packed as it could be. Every table was occupied with men and women talking loudly, laughing loudly, cheering loudly. Such a lively place!
To emphasize what a cultural activity this is, I should note that a women came in pushing a stroller and, during the half time break, was breastfeeding a baby that couldn't have been more than 6 months old, illustrating my point that soccer here is a way of life and that a genuine interest in the adroit maneuvers or the statistics of the team is not necessary. When you grow up with this tradition, it becomes something you simply do. I found it encouraging--not to become poetically sentimental--in the sense that, despite what some might say about this new generation/the electronic age etc etc, we still have deeply rooted pastimes that bring us together into crowded little pubs on side streets for a slice of bruschetta and four or five glasses of cheap beer even on cold, damp nights simply to be with one another.
And that in and of itself is a beautiful thing.
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