How beautiful Catalan sport can be

BarcelonaIs it important to have roots? Sometimes I doubt. I like to know where my roots are. A place, a scene, that explains to me. This has been a very nice weekend, in that sense. Seeing the Narcís Sala packed to the brim for a Fifth Division match between Sant Andreu and Europa, with thousands of people returning to the neighborhood fields, gives you goosebumps. Neighborhood or “town and village” fields, as they like to say in Gràcia and Sant Andreu. People who have understood that a city model, a way of living, is at risk, now that in no time a vulture fund buys your building and kicks you out, as a foreign student pays more to live for a few months in the city. Animating Europe or Sant Andreu is defending a city model where you have common spaces, where the community is cared for, where you can put down roots.

The same weekend, my CN Sabadell won again the sixth Women’s Water Polo Championship. I say mine, as I was a member for more than a decade. I learned to swim in the old Gran Via swimming pool, looking with my child’s eyes at the photos of the club’s Olympians, the first of them in 1948. In the final it was great to see the crowd that arrived from Mataró, where touching the sea they have a model club that takes care of its members and its professionals. Seeing a lot of Catalan women, with the support of foreign reinforcements, fighting to be the best in the world fills me with pride. These clubs are the country’s heritage, as they explain us as a society. Clubs such as Santboiana, victorious in their rugby derby against Barça; the Granollers of handball; the Voltregà in hockey, or the Girona in women’s basketball. Spaces where people know each other, help each other. Clubs that defend a way of doing things, a community. How important it is to feel caressed by a community in a time when you can feel very alone.

All in all, a weekend after the Kings League, with its controversy with Sants. How lazy that everything is a controversy, a fight of easy headlines, of renegades and trenches. Whenever people pontificate about whether one model is better than the other, I always think that you need to let time pass and see what will happen with the projects. And that many of those who spend their lives shouting forget that there is a way in the middle: coexistence. That a young person can enjoy in front of a screen with new shows, and on Sunday go with their friends or family to the Narcís Sala. Whenever a new fad is born, some believe it will kill the previous ones. And by default, that’s usually not the case. Thousands of young people follow the new fashions, but that doesn’t mean they don’t value having roots. There are always races to criticize the youth, when you should trust them. That the Narcís Sala was full of young people, too.

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