A Basque kind of glory
With Athletic Club's "party of the century" in Bilbao and looming Basque elections, all eyes are on Euskadi.
By now I’d like to think that I’ve developed a good feel for which way the wind is blowing when it comes to public opinion in Spain.
With this year’s Copa del Rey final, however, I got it totally wrong.
Undoubtedly triggered by the football hipster hormones that Athletic Club - Bilbao’s team of Basque men (some more Basque than others) - is so effective at generating, I presumed that everyone in Spain would be willing the cup back up north to the country’s most mítico stadium for the first time in 40 years. After all, along with Liverpool’s Anfield, no other estadio is revered and romanticised in Spain as San Mamés - nicknamed La Catedral - home of The Lions.
Free of the exaggeration that pollutes everything whenever FC Barcelona or Real Madrid are involved in anything, an Athletic Club v Mallorca final was about as neutral affair as you can get. But in a country with 47 million opinions, neutrality is rarely on the menu.
Lured deeper into echo chambers by social media algorithms that know how to nourish my penchant for sporting sleeping giants ready to rouse from their slumber, I thought everyone else without a runner in the two-horse race would love to see the famous Gabarra cruising along bursting banks of red and white euphoria, evoking memories of when Spanish football wasn’t built to serve two teams.
Speaking to several football fans from different parts of the country, however, I realised, once again, that Spain is different.
“Fans of various club will be hoping Athletic Club win because it would mean that team who finishes seventh in La Liga would qualify for European competition,” Emilio Contreras, deputy director of Marca, told me a few days before the game. “But across the rest of the country, a large part would be cheering on Mallorca for political reasons.”
With the blinkers on, I overlooked the fact that all aspects of Spanish life are squeezed and poked by the tentacles of politics, as well as the fierce regional rivalries that exist in Spain between the haves and have nots.
The Basque Country is one of the haves.
“With a population of just 2.2 million, it is one of the most prosperous and developed parts of Spain,” wrote Michael Reid in Spain: The trials & triumphs of a modern European country. “Since the transition (to democracy), it has enjoyed the most wide-ranging autonomy of any region in the EU. The Basque government not only runs public services, its own police force (known as the Ertzaintza) and a public television station but also collects its own taxes.”
The tax privileges that the region enjoys facilitate high public spending and it’s very rare for the Basque Country not to feature on the podium for any sort of national quality-of-life ranking. “‘Spain robs us’ - the great Catalan battle cry - was not a phrase anyone could seriously utter in Bilbao or San Sebastián,” wrote Tobias Buck, the former Spain correspondent for The Financial Times, in After the Fall.
Then there are Spaniards for whom the region’s striking red, green, and white flag (based on the Union Jack), the ikurriña, is like a political red rag to a bull, a symbol of separatism that evokes memories of the bloody massacres of civilians carried out by ETA in the name of Basque independence. Just like Irish immigrants in England when the IRA ramped up its attacks on British soil, in some people’s eyes the Basques were and continue to be guilty by association. “Whenever we travel outside Euskadi (the region’s name in Basque), people always jokingly ask whether we are from ETA,” a 14-year-old girl from Vitoria-Gasteiz told El País this week. Ahead of the 2016 Eurovision song contest in Sweden, organisers initially put the ikurriña on its original banned flag list - it was quickly removed after complaints from both the Basque and national governments.
And as if the sight of the Basque flag hanging on balconies across the country (there are Athletic Club peñas/supporter clubs all over Spain) wasn’t enough to get a bit of territorial tension going, the Copa del Rey Final weekend coincided with the start of the Basque Country regional election campaign, instantly lurching Euskadi’s three provinces - Biscay, Gipuzkoa, and Álava - and one incendiary surname - Otegi - back into the national spotlight. Basques will head to the polling stations on Sunday, April 21st to elect their new lehendakari as current regional president Iñigo Urkullu prepares to step down at the end of his term.
While Athletic Club couldn’t stop losing cup finals since their last Copa del Rey in 1984 (they’d lost six straight before this year), the moderately nationalist and right-leaning PNV hasn’t stopped winning elections. Michael Reid described the party as “the most impressive political machine in Spain” - they’ve been in power for all but three of the last 44 years.
But with the ferocious rise of EH Bildu, April 2024 could see another historic run of a different Basque institution come to an end.
Described by Reid as ETA’s “successor political alliance,” the pro-independence, radical-left EH Bildu is the party of choice of those aged 18-35 due to its progressive approach to social issues such as healthcare, housing, and renewable energy. Highly active on the ground and loyal to the blueprint set out by Ireland’s Sinn Féin, Basque independence is today well down Bildu’s agenda.
While no longer a regional president candidate, Arnaldo Otegi is still the leader and face of Bildu. “A former member of ETA, Otegi spent long years in jail, most recently for recently for his role in trying to re-establish the banned Herri Batasuna party,” wrote Tobias Buck. “In the rest of Spain, he was - and is - loathed as an apologist for terror by a small minority.”
That Bildu has become the dominant left-wing party in the Basque Country illustrates how quickly the society has changed. Moral questions aside, the involvement of former ETA members in politics is a democratic success. That all four young Basque adults (born in 2004) recently interviewed by El País had never learned about Eta in school, however, is an educational failure. One former politician from the region’s Socialist party told the newspaper that there has been a collective amnesia. “The majority of people have turned the page without even reading it,” he said. Once again, it seems Spain has chosen to bury its bloody past instead of properly processing it.
Not even 20 years have passed since Giles Tremlett wrote about Gotzone Mora, a University of the Basque Country lecturer and member of the Basque Socialist Party who needed armed bodyguard protection on campus due to threats from ETA. The 2016 Basque Country regional elections were the first to be carried out without the threat of violence hanging over Spain. It feels very soon to be consigning such recent events to a distant past.
“Basque society no longer sees EH Bildu as a mere descendant of Herri Batasuna, as is the perception in the rest of Spain,” wrote Lola García in La Vanguardia. “It’s clear that the society still harbours a strong national sentiment, but it has taken note of the Catalan independence process and has come to the conclusion that it’s not for them. They’re not willing to jeopardise what they’ve already achieved,” concluded García.
In 2021, an El País piece examined what it called the Basque paradox of less separatism and more nationalism. “Never before have so many Basques rejected the idea of independence from Spain, while support for the PNV and EH Bildu is beating records.” Initial polls ahead of “21A” have the nationalist parties devouring more than two-thirds of the overall vote. Language is a strong element of this identity and El Mundo reported that 74.5% of 16-24 year olds in the Basque Region can speak Basque (Euskera). In 1991 that figure was 25%.
During my last visit to Bilbao and San Sebastián, I found it impossible to imagine this pair of sophisticated and culturally-rich cities being shrouded in terror for decades. “Basques today are counting Michelin stars, not bodies,” wrote Tobias Buck.
This week in Bilbao they have begun counting major football titles again.
For younger generations of Athletic Club fans, it was about time. But, lord, it was worth the wait.
The Copa del Rey to Athletic Club is what the FA Cup was to every team in England prior to the turn of the millennium. After beating Mallorca on penalties, it now has 25 titles, five more than Real Madrid.
“We’re without doubt the most fascinating club in the world,” said coach Ernesto Valverde. “And when it comes to celebrating titles, the best.” Marca described Thursday’s homecoming in La Gabarra as the “Party of the century.”
According to the official Athletic Club website, “Una gabarra is a barge, but this is LA GABARRA. At Athletic, this specific barge is synonymous with glory. When Athletic win a major trophy, they don’t take the typical open-top bus tour… Instead, they ride a barge down Bilbao’s River Nervión. The decision to hit the waves was inspired by an old folk song about some footballers sailing down the river in a barge.”
There was something primal about the rickety-looking Gabarra shipping the cup up to Bilbao, navigating the 13km stretch from Getxo to the city hall with close to a million people watching a mass Viking-like invasion of boats - balconies with a view were rented for up to €1,000.
Steel mill workers with hard hats and high-vis jackets doing a bad job at hiding Athletic Club shirts rejoiced. The shiny Guggenheim Museum shone under the spring sun. Children, allowed to leave school early, sat on shoulders. The Gabarra’s route passed through Bilbao’s past, present, and future.
“Bilbao roars again,” said Marca. “And for one day, we roar with it.” The prime time news on Spain’s state broadcaster RTVE opened with coverage of the celebrations. The most popular night-time football radio show, El Larguero, began by playing Athletic Club’s iconic anthem for listeners across the country. Despite pre-final preferences, Spain knew it had witnessed something special.
Politics could have a day off - this was a day where we saw Spain embracing its diversity of cultures, languages, and traditions.
It was Spain at its best
Now I’m off to watch more videos of the magic on the streets of Bilbao - or whatever the algorithms send my way.
Until next time.