The pending accounts of Spain and England: “Why do the Spanish wear a mustache? To look like their mothers”

2023-08-18 14:10:15

Despite being, a priori, the most difficult rival for being the reigning European championthe consensus was unanimous when the players of the Spanish women’s soccer team for the rival they preferred for the World Cup final in Australia and New Zealand: “England”.

It hasn’t healed yet elimination in the quarterfinals of the last Eurocopa against the English after being superior during the match, but Jorge Vilda’s lack of aim penalized them. Esther González put Spain ahead in the 58th minute, but in the 84th minute Toons nailed a shot from Russo to the net to put the tie at the end of the 90 minutes. in extra time a stanway shoe from outside the area in 96 he dashed the Spanish hopes.

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That match, which was played just over a year ago, on July 20, 2022, is very fresh in the memory of the Vilda players. The English footballers praised the performance of the Spanish, but the English media had rarefied the previous atmosphere with some statements that strained the previous one. A common practice in English newspapers, especially when the rival is Spain.

Reuters

The newspaper archives are full of mockery and rude disqualifications of the English against the Spanish men and women every time they have faced our team, both boys and girls. In 1996, when the men’s team met (and lost) against England in the Eurocup quarterfinals, tabloids like the Mirror or The Sun mocked Spanish women with offensive jokes like the one in which they asked: “Do you know why the Spanish wear a mustache? To look like their mothers”. Or also: “What are the pretty girls called in Spain? Tourists”.

Franco, paella, the Inquisition…

Later, as Lola Galán recalled in an article in ‘El País’ at the time, The Sun offered his particular list of the 10 unpleasant contributions from Spain to the world: among them, syphilis (“brought by Columbus from Central America”), the Spanish flu, the bombardment model used against Gernika in the Civil War, the Inquisition, the bulls, the Spanish fly, (“a useless aphrodisiac”), the pan (“also known as cobblestone paella, for what it repeats”), flamenco, which he compares to the female version of ‘speed’, a little-reputed British folk dance, Francisco Franco (“the chubby dictator with the stupid mustache”) and Eldorado, a BBC series filmed in our country.

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And, how could it be otherwise, they ended up remembering the list of defeats in battles such as that of the Spanish Armada that the British popular press always attributes to the pirate Drake (in a hodgepodge that included attacks by Dutch pirates on the Spanish ships coming from) from America, the battle for independence from Portugal, the battle of Trafalgar, and the loss of the last colonies in 1898. To conclude with the following that could be read then in the pages of the Mirror: “Spain must be prepared for the defeat next Saturday because has an impressive losing record. The last time the country won an important battle was that of Lepanto… against Turkey”.

Now England conspires for its girls to subdue those “women with mustaches” and manage to chain the Eurocup and the World Cup with Sarah Wiegman in command, whom they place among the candidates to lead the men’s team when Gareth Southgate, current England coach, ends his contract next summer after the Euro Cup in Germany.