The national anthem scandal @ the Copa del Rey

A Basque team and a Catalan team confronting each other to win the "King's Cup"; the irony of the two Spanish peoples with the strongest nationalist/separatist sentiment playing to win a symbol of the Spanish monarchy, in the presence of the King and Queen no less, was not lost upon most. But football trumps politics, though a plan was launched among Basque and Catalan spectators to express their dislike of the Spanish state by whislting when the national anthem was played before the match.

But one of the stations broadcasting the match was the Spanish state-run TV station, rTVe. Mysteriously, before the game, viewers didn't see the national anthem being sung; they cut to a reporter live in Bilbao talking about the ambience in the stadium. And then, the video footage of the players standing at attention for the anthem was played at half time, without the sound. Here's a video that shows what viewers saw on different TV channels. ETB1 ( a Basque channel), TV3 ( a Catalan channel), and TVE.

The public cried Scandal! Conspiracy! TeleEspaña claimed it was human error, that they weren't trying to hide anything, and but their director of Sports programming still ended up resigning.

Athletic, Athletic, zu zara nagusia...

The Bilbao Athletic played the Barcelona Football Club in the Copa del Rey final this week. Picture the Canadiens in the Stanley Cup final times ten.

The Athletic are unlike any other football team in the league in that all their players are from the Basque Country, while big-budget teams like Barcelona recruit the best players from around the world. Athletic fans are particularly rabid, as their fandom is tied up in nationalism. Some even consider the Himno del Athletic (sung here by hundreds of school children), the unofficial national anthem of the Basque Country.

The anticipation of the Copa final was incredible. Thirty thousand Basques took time off work to fly to Valencia for the final. Here in Bilbao, storefronts and balconies had been flying the red and white Athletic flag for weeks. Kids and teachers alike came to school in red and white. Several huge screens were set up all around the city, and the San Mamés stadium was sold out for an evening of music and the game on the big screen. Thousands and thousands of people, dressed in red and white, filled the streets as of the afternoon for the 10pm game.

But they lost the game. The ecstatic buzz that was in the air before the game turned into palpable disappointment. But the pride that Bilbainos have for their team meant that most people partied into the wee hours in spite of the letdown, as if to prove their unconditional love for the Athletic. But unlike Canada or the US after such a stunning loss, there was very little violence: very few fights, no rioting, and only a bit of vandalism.

Friday afternoon the Athletic returned to Bilbao from Valencia. The crowd that came out to see the team give a speech on the balcony of the town hall, and the city-wide party that ensued, was almost as impressive as Wednesday night. In any case, more than you'd expect for the losing team, or, the sub-campeones as they were being called on the Athletic website.

Basauri, circa late 70's

Basauri, the town south of Bilbao where I work, had more marches, protests and conflict than most barrios in Basque Country during the tumultuous transition from dictatorship to democracy in the late 70's.

Police presence was constant, political activism the usual motivation for their harrassment, as the Basques were mobilizing and demanding political autonomy over Euskadi. One of my colleagues told me it was nothing strange to have the police raid the high school where she studied.

One day, they arrested a kid from her school, and held him in the police station overnight, for political reasons. The following day the whole school, students, teachers, and staff, marched to the police station, demanding to know what was going on. The police came out, told them to go away, or they'd open fire on the group.

My co-worker got trampled in the crush of students running away as the police threatened to shoot. "In the end I got hurt just as bad as if the police had come out and beat us up," she told me.

Intercultural fascination #560

Deodorant.

Sometime back in the 90's, when the anti-CFC backlash was happening in North America, they stopped selling spray deodorant. Chloroflorocarbons in the atmosphere for the sake of dry armpits? Switch 'em all to solids and roll-ons, the producers said. Except somewhere along the line roll-on deodorant disappeared too, and now for all intents and purposes, in a Canadian drugstore, it's solids or au naturel.

But not here. I'm happy to report that spray deodorant is alive and well.

I was reluctant to embrace it at first, but now I will never turn back. Not only is it less annoying for your skin and clothes, it's FUN to put on! Pppsssssshhhhhhtt! Pppsssssshhhhhhttt!

This is what intercultural exchange is really about.