The loss of spaces for socialization now that everything can be bought online is one of the concerns of those planning the future of cities. One of its most obvious derivatives is loneliness, a great contemporary epidemic. But there are others that even have political implications.
In the essential CCCB exhibition Subúrbia, curated by Philipp Engel, one of the most negative effects of the American suburban model is pointed out, which can be extended to any country that has signed up to the formula of dispersed urbanism. The rise of online commerce – we are reminded there – is causing the massive closure of malls. These large commercial and leisure areas, where social life takes place in large urbanizations, are in turn being converted into Amazon logistics centers.
As a result, the community life of residents is channeled mainly through social networks, with the fearsome consequences that we can imagine.
The problem is not exclusive to the dispersed territory of houses with swimming pools and barbecues: cities also lose space for socialization to the extent that the presence of traditional commerce declines.
Recovering these meeting points is a challenge of modern urban planning (in Barcelona, the rehabilitation of neighborhood markets, the library network or superblocks), but it should also be preserving other areas that do not seem so obvious and that are seriously threatened.
One of them is football understood as a factor of identity of the neighborhood and the city, whether it is small, medium or large. That is, the type of football that is threatened by the project of creating a closed super league in which only the teams that interest global audiences play.
The phenomenon of football as a factor of neighborhood cohesion has very clear examples in cities like Madrid or Barcelona. In the capital it is very relevant, with minor teams consolidated in the first division such as Rayo Vallecano and others of good level such as Getafe, Alcorcón or Leganés.
In Barcelona, the trend is more recent and modest. The heyday of Europa and Sant Andreu in the second federation (what would become a fourth national category), with the stands full in some games, is as interesting as it is unexpected. Without forgetting, of course, the prodigious season of a modest team fully identified with its city such as Girona.
But few cases like that of Athletic Club de Bilbao highlight the injustice of restricting football to elite teams. The Cup final played by the people of Bilbao and Mallorca transcended their hobbies by capturing the interest of football fans from all over the country, as demonstrated by the audience that TVE obtained: 4.3 million viewers and a screen share of 34 .8%.
Why were the fans of clubs that are part of the football oligarchy and who are used to having golden balls in their ranks interested in this match lacking media players (with the pardon of Nico Williams)? Perhaps because what is at stake is the very essence of this sport: passion, identification and general complicity with a low-budget club like RCD Mallorca, capable of going where the big ones couldn't.
The popular and victorious parade of the Athletic Club barge, which appeared on the front pages of the country's main newspapers, slid in the opposite direction to the forward flight of Florentino Pérez's Real Madrid and Joan Laporta's Barça,
