Monday, June 30, 2008

The New Order

Among the most famous ongoing gags from the first season of Saturday Night Live was the one in which Chevy Chase, anchoring the news on Weekend Update, would announce breaking developments that "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead!" The Spanish dictator had lingered on his deathbed for months before succumbing and the major networks had felt compelled to broadcast updates of the death watch continually. SNL went them one better.

During the intervening 33 years much has changed in Spain. (See my post immediately below.) Yesterday, the last of Franco's Spain was buried for good as the Spanish national soccer team captured the Euro 2008 crown and announced to the entire world, not just the sporting portion of it, that a new order reigned in modern Spain.

The win by Spain over a good but not great German squad was the Spaniards first international triumph in a major championship in forty-four years. It wasn't as if Spanish soccer had suddenly improved. The Spaniards were always highly regarded; indeed, by most accounts, Spanish soccer during the intervening decades was characterized by high expectations, considerable skill and consistent under achievement. The reasons were many but the one most cited by the experts was the fractious regionalism of the country itself, a legacy of Franco's vengeful authoritarianism. Apparently, those internecine hostilities invariably undermined the teams Spain assembled and sent forth to do battle. More than once a better player was left off an international squad simply because an Asturian or Andalusian player was needed to fill out the team's quota of choosing members from every corner of the Peninsula.

The 2008 squad was different, however. In assembling it, the coaches and powers-that-be chose the best players regardless of the cities and towns of their native birth. Instead of Galicians or Catalans they chose Spaniards. If all of the best players were natives of the same village, so be it! The result was a swift, skilled and aggressive team who were among the favorites coming into the tourney and who played up to and beyond expectations throughout it.

Now they are champions and all of Spain is celebrating. They are a fitting symbol of the new order. The old one is buried and best forgotten.

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