Should Spain’s Athletes Get into Politics?

When traveling around the world one is astonished to discover that football is –in the eyes of many– a country’s main defining component. In Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, hundreds of taxi-drivers are fans of Real Madrid or Barça and know the smallest details about Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi, even though they will never travel the 12,000 kilometers from Southeast Asia to Southern Europe. Can the essence of a nation really be fathomed through its sports teams?

Spanish politicians have spent seven months squabbling and the country has no government since December 2015 when general elections granted no decisive majority. However, if one were to judge Spain by its national sports teams the picture seems quite different. The Spanish National Football team has won the FIFA Fair-Play Award in two of the three latest World Cup tournaments, due to the harmonious integrity displayed by its players.

The governmental gridlock is not Spain’s only political problem: Catalonia’s separatist movement has gone one step further in defying the constitutional court by debating in its local parliament an illegal pro-independence course of action, after which the region’s president announced a confidence vote to further consolidate the move towards sovereignty. While the political scene is a pathetic chaos, with Spanish leaders using a profusion of tricks and stunts that place the nation somewhere between a circus and a mafia movie, the country’s sports teams and players are a constant source of satisfaction. At the Rio 2016 Olympics, Spain will be represented by a delegation of 305 athletes, 163 men and 142 women. The Spanish flag bearer in the opening ceremony will be tennis world-champion Rafael Nadal. When the national delegation gets back, maybe the athletes could impart some coaching sessions so as to convey some of their wisdom to the Spanish power elite.