SORRY, I can't seem to be able to get excited about this: I don't like soccer. And it puts me off seeing so many expressions of cheap patriotism, with everyone carrying the flag, or their faces painted in red and yellow, and chanting on the streets as if the most important thing in the world had happened.

It's not that I'm anti-patriotism, or something. It's just that I make a mental excercise: if this had happened during Aznar's conservative administration, all the intelligentsia would be screaming off their lungs that Francoism is back etc. But now we're under a Socialist administration, with the championship broadcast on a pro-Socialist TV network, and suddenly it's so cool...

And what it is is a part of the anesthesiation of the populace: they're happy about soccer, so the bitter pill -economy tanking, unemployment rising, inflation up the roof- it's easier to swallow. Panem et circenses indeed.