Within just a few hours of each other, Spain has consummated two major sporting fiascos: elimination from the football World Cup and the closure of the Mediterranean Games that have been held in Tarragona. In neither case was the disaster coincidental: in the case of the World Cup underway in Russia, the Spanish team got what was coming to it. After a group phase in which it played very mediocre football, it was incapable of raising its standard in the knock-out final-16 match and as a result is already on its way home from Russia.
The days of glory with a team centred on the mythical Barça players of the last decade have passed and now it is just one more national side. As it historically has been. If one adds in the overnight sacking of the team coach who was supposed to lead the World Cup campaign ― Julen Lopetegui― after announcing that he had been signed as manager for Real Madrid, forty-eight hours before the first match in Russia, everything is understood much more easily.
Sunday also saw the closing ceremony of the Mediterranean Games in Tarragona. An event at the level of the greatest sporting debacles in memory. It is scarcely possible to accumulate more disasters, from the organizational to the institutional, in a ten day period. The most outstanding, the error that meant that the majority of events took place in front of empty or half-empty grandstands, including the opening and closing ceremonies. It must also be mentioned that event tickets were channelled in particular to groups of unionist political persuasion and, on the other hand were not supplied to Catalan sport federations, as the Catalan government has complained.
The historical propensity to cover up all fiascos will, probably, mean that for several weeks nothing will be said about all this. It must be demanded, and not just as an exceptional action, that the organizers are made to front up for their errors, since the images of both Tarragona and Catalonia have been tainted by incompetence and sectarianism.