“Nobody is a prophet in their own land”.
Lucas 4:24
Yesterday Monday, 36 hours after Manchester City won the Champions League, the English sports press did not stop praising their coach, Pep Guardiola. “Guardiola, an all-time great”, headlined The Guardian. “Guardiola’s City have no equal,” said the Daily Mail. “Guardiola is the greatest,” declared the BBC.
Even The New York Times, pagan football United States, published an article titled, “Guardiola, the man behind the genius.”
The Spanish sports press, on the other hand, ignored him. Little of interest here. Curious, that. There is no more admired Spaniard in the world of sport than Guardiola. There is no more famous Spaniard in the whole world than him.
Fame is measured in numbers, by the number of human beings who know who a certain person is. Given the enormity of soccer as a planetary phenomenon, far above tennis, for example, or politics, neither Rafael Nadal nor Carlos Alcaraz compete with Guardiola, not even (believe me) Isabel Ayuso or Alberto Feijóo. In half Africa, Asia or Latin America they know who Pep is; the less they know who Rafa or Carlitos are.
What would surprise the English, in particular, what would stupefy them, is that far from being proud of their compatriot, half or more of Spaniards detest Guardiola. Yes, with a visceral hatred. The mere mention of his name makes them foam at the mouth.
As with Pedro Sánchez, the most handsome, most cosmopolitan and most respected Spanish Prime Minister abroad since who knows when. It may be that my condition as a foreigner conditions me, but I can’t explain it. I don’t understand how so many of my acquaintances, otherwise sensible and serene people, go so crazy when Sánchez comes up in conversation. Sometimes it has been as if blood was going to drip from their ears.
I see how a Ukrainian might react like this to Putin, or a New Yorker to Trump. But the disproportion between what it is and what Sánchez has done compared to the rage it arouses leaves me perplexed. Already. I see how the alliance he made with Podemos and company could cause some disgust. For many Spaniards, speaking of disproportion, Pablo Iglesias and Irene Montero are the satanic couple. But Sánchez was already hated, even within his own party, before he communed with the devil. And the fact that the Spanish economy offers better growth numbers today than the German or British, that Catalonia is no longer about to explode, that in meetings with the presidents of the United States or China they take Sánchez seriously Since, say, Ayuso would never be taken seriously, he does not seem to have any value for many millions of Spaniards.
That being said, we are not going to compare Sánchez’s achievements with those of Guardiola. The treble he has just achieved with City – Premier, FA Cup and Champions – is something else, mainly because politics is a sport of passing interest compared to football. But the truth is that both arouse very similar emotions among a huge sector of their compatriots.
I have sought explanations in recent days from people who see Sánchez and Guardiola with more equanimity, but they have not completely convinced me. They usually tell me that everything has to do with the original Spanish sin of envy. That the problem is that they’re both too handsome and smart for the average Spaniard with a complex, and to top it off they speak other languages. It doesn’t convince me because I don’t think the Spanish are especially envious compared to the rest of humanity, or that they are so stingy. But it is still my blindness problem, of not wanting to think badly of my favorite people in the world.
Another explanation regarding Guardiola, of course, is that he is Catalan, with pro-sovereignty tendencies and that he has declared himself in favor (horrors!) of a referendum on independence. Here perhaps we come across Sánchez again, a guy measured in his attitude towards people who think like Guardiola: he doesn’t hate them as God commands. Or as the homeland –or as a certain concept of homeland– he commands.
With which, it suddenly occurs to me that the problem may be that the two are not considered as real Spaniards. If so, I’ll stick with the fake ones.
