Give the World Cup to Spain

We are not used to the deployment of citizens in red shirts and Spanish flags in the streets of Barcelona with the relevant ritual chants. And it is shocking when you find yourself in it, even if it is perfectly predictable: it is the afternoon and evening when Spain wins its second Football World Cup. Sporting hegemonies play an important role in the economy of collective passions and often generate clichés that hide social complexity. The absence of a Catalan national team in international competitions has been capitalized by Barça, attributing to itself the role of the national team of Catalonia. With this logic of good and bad guys, the 'culer' religion has taken hold in such a way that it seems that the city (and the country) is its territory. But here it is that one day the Spanish team is proclaimed world champion and you go out into the street and you find groups of citizens with rojigualda flags and cries of patriotic enthusiasm, and your face shows that you don't know where you are. What is happening? Well, simply that societies – and people – are more complex than we think, that economies of desire are convoluted, volatile, and that just as they lead to confrontation, they can also lead to unexpected complicities.

And suddenly the rojigualda dictates the agenda even on TV3. And TV3 does very well, because it is indeed news and because many Catalans have felt involved in this story. The game of good guys and bad guys often confuses us more than it teaches us. How can it be that just four days ago the fable that independence was within reach was believed, and now the cry of la roja echoes throughout Barcelona? Because societies have many more keys than the proposals with which they are attempted to be framed, and impulses have a diverse range of inclinations.

These contradictions are natural expressions of the human condition. Societies are by definition complex, no matter how much authoritarians want to homogenize them. And the problem lies in ideologies that present themselves as strictly observant: for example, nationalisms, which are founded on the us and them. If anything is evident in Barcelona, it is that there is no imperative "us", but rather the diversity of a city with citizens of the most varied origins, many of them Spanish, but also tens of thousands of immigrants from everywhere. And this is what explains why Barça is hegemonic but not unique, why even Madrid has a large clientele here and why the "rojigualda" (Spanish flag) draws people to the streets. And even more so at a time like this, when nine of the Spanish national team players are Catalan (eight from Barça). And even more so, there is only one – and an incidental one – from Real Madrid. Which is liberating: cheering for the Spanish national team's goals ceases to be a betrayal and becomes a way of highlighting the rival's weakness. And so the sum has been made, and many people have been attracted to a team that plays well. And obviously the first reaction is to claim it: to make it their own brand. We have come to hear it said that it was Barça who won the World Cup. The economies of collective desire are like that. And societies too. And this time, supporting the Spanish national team expresses a weariness of the demand for individual commitment, when the defense of Catalan institutions is increasingly meager.

It is true that all this Hispanic patriotic noise in the city, where nine years ago an independence referendum was voted on, is shocking. But it is explained, in part, by the complexity of a society that failed in that attempt, which was sailing above reality. And now it turns out that Catalonia has won the World Cup for Spain. We are human, that is to say, unpredictable in the ways we adapt to each circumstance.