Last night, I was Spanish, and so were millions around the world
For many of us, Gaza was on our mind when we watched and celebrated Spain’s triumph at the World Cup. Last night, Spain defeated Argentina
For many of us, Gaza was on our mind when we watched and celebrated Spain’s triumph at the World Cup. Last night, Spain defeated Argentina to win the World Cup. Ordinarily, for those of us with no national connection to either country, the choice of whom to support would have been gloriously trivial. We might have chosen the team that played more beautiful football, the player we most admired or simply the side whose colours we preferred. But these are no ordinary times. Gaza and Palestine have changed the way many of us see the world. It has become a moral prism, refracting our judgments not only about governments and political leaders, but about institutions, universities, media, corporations and public figures. We have watched people and institutions we once respected avert their eyes from the destruction of a people. We have watched others discover elaborate vocabularies of qualification and equivocation when confronted with horrors that, in another place and against another people, they would have condemned without hesitation. And we have remembered those who refused to look away. That is why, last night, I was Spanish. Of course, a football team is not a government. Spanish footballers are not responsible for the policies of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, any more than Lionel Messi and his teammates are responsible for the politics of Argentinian President Javier Milei. But sport has never existed in the hermetically sealed apolitical world we sometimes pretend it inhabits. We bring ourselves to sport. We bring our histories, our identities, our sympathies and, inevitably, our moral judgements. We decide whom we want to win for reasons that often have very little to do with formations and statistics. And so, for many people of conscience, Spain has come to represent something larger. At a moment when much of the Western political establishment has twisted itself into moral and linguistic contortions over Gaza, Spain has stood apart.
Sánchez and his government have been willing to speak with a clarity conspicuously absent from many of Spain’s Western allies. Spain recognised the State of Palestine. Sánchez has openly used the word genocide to describe what is being done in Gaza. His government has moved to entrench an arms embargo against Israel. One need not agree with every policy of the Spanish government to recognise the significance of that position. Moral courage is measured precisely when taking a position carries a cost. There was also something deeply moving about seeing Lamine Yamal, one of the brightest young stars in world football, waving the Palestinian flag during Barcelona’s celebrations after winning La Liga. It was a small gesture in the vast landscape of Palestinian suffering. But symbols matter, particularly when so many powerful institutions have worked so hard to make Palestine invisible. There was Yamal, at the summit of sporting success, surrounded by celebration, holding up the flag of a people whose suffering the world has been asked repeatedly to forget. And last night he wore the colours of Spain in a World Cup final and emerged a world champion. On the other side stood Argentina, a magnificent footballing nation led by perhaps the greatest footballer of his generation. And here, too, Gaza intruded upon the emotions with which some of us watched. An image of Lionel Messi at the Western Wall in occupied East Jerusalem has circulated widely. It dates back to Barcelona’s 2013 visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, years before the present catastrophe. But images have lives beyond the circumstances in which they were created, and Gaza has transformed the way many of us see them. The contrast with Lamine Yamal is striking. There is the image of Messi at the Western Wall. And there is the image of Yamal, at one of the happiest moments of his young career, waving the Palestinian flag.
The BriefWire