Last Saturday evening, my roommate Arielle, her mother who is in town visiting, Sarah, and I went to a fútbol match AKA soccer. Up until Saturday, I’d only been to one soccer game in my life (if 20 minutes of a high school game counts), and frankly, I found it to be a bit of a bore. But here, of course, soccer is all the rage, and I didn’t want to miss out on an experience that is so essential to Spanish culture and to thousands of sevillanos. So, I squeezed into my two pairs of pants, pulled on my four layers of shirts, wrapped myself up in a scarf and a hat, and off I was. The first few steps into the stadium left me a little bit breathless. The vibrant green grass. Bright lights shining all around. Stacks and stacks of fans decked in red and white. The giant moon beaming down from just above the stadium walls. It was overwhelming. I had to pause for a moment to get my footing as we made our way up up up the dizzyingly steep stairs to fila 13. “Are they going to play the national anthem?” Arielle’s mother asked. I think I may have actually scoffed a little. This was something we had discussed in a class back in September, and it was terribly intriguing to me at the time. The answer: no, they would decidedly not be playing the anthem at the game. Spain’s national anthem is one of only four in the world (thanks, Wikipedia) that does not have official lyrics. In the past, lyrics have been proposed--during Franco’s rule, under the rule of one of the monarchs, etc, but nothing has stuck. Rather than unify, the anthem I think is a bit more divisive--even controversial. Instead of a national anthem, each autonomous region (there are 17 that make up Spain) has its own anthem. So as the crowd rose from the seats and the music began to play over the speakers, it was not the national anthem that we heard, nor was it the anthem of Andalucía, but the Himno del Sevilla F.C.--the anthem of the Sevilla fútbol team. The largely male crowd was suddenly on their feet. In place of hands on hearts, the entire stadium was clothed in a sea of scarves lifted in the air. “Sevilla, Sevilla, Sevilla,” they sang. “Sevilla, Sevilla, Sevilla,” the scarves declared. The team Sevilla, that is. The moment was both inspiring and a tad humorous to me. Their passion was so real, so intense. It reminded me of a book I read way back in middle school called How Soccer Explains the World. For these fans, soccer was not just a sport. It was a way of life. That much was obvious. In place of pride for their country, they have pride in their team. Of course, I am not one to mock team spirit. It is just that I have grown up seeing that kind of pride reserved for my country above all else, and to see that same emotion displayed for a team was a bit jolting. What I presumed to be the season-ticketers kept up the excitement the entire game. And when I say entire, I mean entire. Cheers, chants, singing, waving flags, even a drum. I couldn’t catch the words, but those people must have been exhausted by the end. They provided non-stop background music to the game that rang throughout the entire stadium. The rest of the people were a bit chiller, saving their energy for the much-anticipated ¡GOL! (of which there were two) and for player substitutions, when everyone would clap very enthusiastically, and I would wonder if I had just missed something… But despite walking in with very little knowledge and only a smidge of team spirit, it is now almost one week later, and I’m still singing the Sevilla anthem around the house (link here, but remember, you’ve been warned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHG3EjnTZbk). I wouldn’t call myself a sevillista just yet, but the enthusiasm was certainly contagious. Also, in case you’re wondering, we won. Shabbat Shalom and happy weekend! <3 Love to all, Elana
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |