The special envoys to the World Cup have taken a blow with the elimination of the Spanish team. It's not an emotional issue, although it could be, it's more of a professional issue. Informatively, a feeling of orphanhood overcomes us. Luis Enrique is leaving and with him his press conferences, his haters, and the interviews with players that the Federation was dosing after each game also vanish, something that few teams do, let alone the clubs, increasingly bunkered. They tell us that in Spain the grief and the mourning for the defeat are even more difficult to digest and it is not for less: Mariano Rajoy will not write any more articles.
In short, those of us who resist in Qatar are left with Messi, Neymar and this Saturday a France-England match. And an interview that I dreamed of doing since I was a child and that you will read tomorrow, so let's not dramatize.
At night, after the elimination of Spain, we end up with some Catalan colleagues on a hotel terrace, one of those that have the kitchen open until very late (good), serve alcohol (better), but nullify any sensation of exoticism despite being a thousands of kilometers from your sofa (come down). You find yourself dining in Doha as you might be dining in Barcelona, Lisbon, Brussels or Singapore. These sites are all the same. Not a trace of local products in an international menu with hamburgers, nachos, quesadillas, club sandwiches and all that blandness of monotonous globality.
And suddenly a waitress who, what a joke, speaks Catalan to us because she is Catalan. And now, attention to the script twist.
The girl, in her twenties, tells us that she is on a six-month internship contract but wants to return because she is being exploited at work. "What are your hours?", we asked him. "I start at three in the afternoon and finish at five in the morning." That is brutality, the restaurant is a constant bustle, there is no respite. The extra hour is paid at one euro and a peak. A shame.
How bad are the Qataris, they will be thinking about their houses. I'm not saying no, but in this case the hotel chain is more French than La Marseillaise, so the exploitation is ours, from the respectable Europeans who look at others with that moral superiority from a pedestal of civility that we also spend for the lining Wild capitalism is that. A cheeseburger with fries and an underpaid waiter with bags under his eyes serving her. Let's see if it turns out that we are not so different.
I finally get to my hotel room, I set tasks on my diary to do the next day, and I open a Norman Mailer book that I bought before leaving just in case one day I had to write a traditional article so I could end it with this hesitation. Even title it! Some take Orfidal to sleep, I read dead authors who look good in case someone asks me what I have taken to read. Snobbery size XXL. Mailer, in Doha, lasts me a couple of paragraphs before snoring. Blame it on tiredness, not Norman Mailer. The book is called Tough Guys Don't Dance. And I think of Brazil, I have already forgotten Spain.
