Normally Spanish late night television is like Hello magazine in debate form. A group of journalists sit around and shout at each other about which Matador is dating which model. It’s light it’s fluffy and it goes on for hours.
Last week though it was all a little different as the debate turned from Spain’s equivalent of Katy Price to a large inhabited rock at the very tip of the country. In the UK the story of Gibraltar has been covered with a hint of incredulity and as the situation in Syria intensifies is less often in the news. But Spanish media continue to cover it, and with increasing levels of belligerence.
As an example in the four days up to August 28th Spanish television channel Telecinco, always slightly right leaning perhaps, had covered the story in its news coverage no less than 8 times. It’s got the attention of the Spanish populace in a way that it never has in the UK.
However almost everyone you speak to in the Spanish capital knows it’s all a smoke screen for the major problems in the country. In particular the word on the streets of Madrid is that a dispute with Gibraltar couldn’t come at a better time for the scandal hit government of Mariano Rajoy.
Rajoy and his party, the Partido Popular (PP,) have been accused of taking backhanders and general corruption in a story that just won’t go away. Worse he’s presiding over the worst financial crisis in the country’s democratic history. Perhaps it’s significant then that it is the central government that has complained the most vehemently over alleged damage to Spanish fishing. Raising what was effectively a local fishing dispute to a matter that could yet go before the United Nations.
Significant or not, suddenly the Spanish are talking about little else (well there is one other subject but more on that later.) Rarely now do you overhear conversations in Madrid about the “crisis” or the employment situations of their friends and children. And yet in the same breath Spaniards mention that they know it’s all a distraction. The Spanish wanted, no needed, something else to occupy their minds other than one in four being out of work, over half the youth unable to find employment and a government and monarchy deeply embroiled in corruption scandals.
For many though there was a sense of disappointment that the argument was being led by a beleaguered government and on a subject normally only beloved of the right. So when the national obsession came up with a new distraction the smiles spread.
To many outside of Spain the distraction of one club seeking to buy a talented welsh footballer for a rumoured £86 million seems hardly something that would grip a nation.
Except, for the Spanish the club in question, Real Madrid is not just a football team. It’s a national icon and football is a way of life. To many it seems insane in a crisis riven economy to spend so much on one man. But the debate in Spain about the cost of Gareth Bale lasted 5 minutes.
Because Spaniards on the whole, and Real fans in particular, didn’t see it as a waste of money, they saw it as a source of pride. The reason was for the Spanish the acquisition of Bale is a different type of distraction to Gibraltar. It’s one where Spain was no longer a nation in suffering but one where they could compete with, and beat, the rest of the world. It’s just the tonic the nation needed.
Now all of us should just hope Spain doesn’t think that the Gibraltar situation is another where they can take on the world and beat them. But then they already know it’s just one big distraction, and they’d probably prefer to watch the football anyway.
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