Spain national football team players

An increasingly diverse Spain squad is drawing in fans who had once seen it as a symbol of their country, but not necessarily of them.

“There is a risk that people can say, OK, there are Black players in the team, there is no problem,” he said. She remembers those tournaments as a child, when she chose not to support the team carrying her flag but her reflection, and how much it would have meant to her not to have had to make that choice. There might be Black players in the Spain squad, but that does not mean that tomorrow there will be Black directors of banks or Black lawmakers or Black media executives.” “It is the same logic that if there is a Black president, then racism must no longer exist. Likewise, a visible, undeniable Black presence on the national soccer team is not a panacea. Bermúdez is not confident that will make any immediate difference to the marginalization of the country’s Black community. “Representation may not be the most important thing in the fight against racism, but it is something that matters,” Bermúdez said. “We could be coming here, but we could not be here.” Mbomío used the contrast between the two forms of the Spanish verb to be — “estar,” temporary and transient, and “ser,” more permanent, existential — to illustrate it. A generation later, Mbomío can look at Spain’s national team and, for the first time, start to see in it a reflection both of herself and her community. “He was like me,” she said. “I felt close to them,” said Mbomío, a 41-year-old journalist and author.