“It’s the game of a whole generation.” On the occasion of a promotional video, the Spanish defender Eric García, Catalan by birth, summed up in one sentence the symbolic nature of the friendly football match between Spain and Albania, this Saturday, March 26.
Because, for the first time in eighteen years, the Spanish selection will play in Catalan territory. Precisely at the RCDE Stadium, usual enclosure of Espanyol Barcelona (a first division resident club), in Cornellà, in the suburbs of Barcelona.
The daily El Periódico de Catalunya savor this “historic meeting” for La Roja and its captain, Jordi Alba, left side of FC Barcelona. “The last time the Spanish national team played a friendly match in Catalonia was February 18, 2004,” remember The world, conservative newspaper from Madrid. Spain won 2-1 against Peru, in front of the 23,500 spectators at the Montjuïc Olympic stadium in Barcelona, including “a large majority of Peruvian supporters”.
In Spain, the political context of the past two decades, marked in particular by Catalonia’s failed attempt to secede in the fall of 2017, has not helped the return of the national football team to this autonomous region in the northeast. of the country, ensures The newspaper. Even when the streets of Barcelona were “boiling” for Spain’s triumphs at Euro 2008 and 2012 and the 2010 World Cup, La Roja no longer played in Catalonia.
No match in the Spanish Basque Country since 1967
However, for the past few months, the relationship between the Spanish central executive and the rebel region has calmed down somewhat, despite the victory of the Catalan independence parties in the regional legislative elections of February 2021.
Only the Spanish Basque Country continues its sulking with the Spanish selection, since this autonomous region in the north of the country has not hosted a La Roja football match since… 1967! This absence was to be “broken during the last Euro [qui s’est tenu en 2021]where the San Mamés stadium was to host Spain’s group matches, but the pandemic pushed UEFA [l’instance dirigeante du football européen] to do without Bilbao as host city”, concludes The newspaper.