EL CORREO collects the photos and excitement of the Cup and the barge in a book

Strictly, it’s a history book, of course. But rarely has a history book shown so many happy faces and so many passionate gestures, like a collective portrait that immortalizes our best side. EL CORREO offers from this Saturday at its usual points of sale ‘A legendary hobby’, a 152 page book published in collaboration with the Bizkaia Provincial Council that aims to summarize the unforgettable days of the Cup final and the reception of the barge. Its pages treasure both the astonishing images of those days, with hundreds of full-color photographs – although the majority of those colors are red and white – as well as the feelings, an intoxicating gush in which the almost childish illusion was twinned, the shared pride and, oh, also the nostalgia for all those we would have loved there and were missing.

If the emotions of all Biscayans could be represented on a graph, surely two peaks of almost alarming intensity would clearly be drawn, enough to immediately go to the cardiologist. One rose throughout the day on April 6 to get out of control in the early hours of the 7th, specifically at 0:47 a.m., when Berenguer scored the final penalty in Seville. And the other occurred on April 11, when so many fans believed they were waking up in a dream, or dreaming a reality, or however you want to translate into clumsy words that experience that they had fantasized about so many times and with which they were so short. expectations were left. Many Biscayans would love to have stayed to live on that April 11, when a million fans merged into a single smiling organism, and the book makes it clear why: we were then “an immense family of very diverse people”, as it describes in the prologue the general deputy, Elixabete Etxanobe.

The volume – “a memory and a tribute”, in the words of the Sports Director of EL CORREO, Ángel Pereda – is a reflection of that festive brotherhood, with images that would seem incredible to us if we had not just experienced them: from afar, in the more open planes, you can recognize the everyday landscape, the banks of the estuary, the mountains that frame the Botxo, but all of this transfigured by an inconceivable red and white crowd that crowded on the shore while conquering balconies, rooftops, slopes, streetlights and even cranes; Up close, you can see thousands of rapturous expressions, thousands of recognizable people, thousands of lives that merged for a few hours. Of course, there is no shortage of emblematic pictures of the players and the boat delegation, nor are the best photographs of the final itself and the overwhelming ‘invasion’ of Seville.

The book, priced at 18 euros, is divided into four sections, each with extensive text that recounts the events but, more importantly, evokes that treasure of sensations. One of them covers the days when Bilbao opened a branch in the Andalusian capital and wrapped it in red and white bands: «It was a bit like that game where you have to find Wally, but in reverse. “Is there any place where Wally is not?”, says journalist Luis López in that section, who highlights the atmosphere “of healthy camaraderie, of a tribe, of a group united by a bond that mixes history, mythology and philosophy.” Another section focuses on the final, and here it is Jon Agiriano who breaks down the complex emotional state that the victory gave rise to, something like a moved exaltation: «Thousands of fans cried, many of them with the memory, so vivid in that precise moment, of the loved ones with whom they could not share a triumph that they had waited together for so many years, fathers, mothers, grandparents, brothers, uncles and friends with whom they had overcome sadness and disappointments without ever losing hope,” writes Agiriano . A third block suffers and enjoys the final from Bilbao, including a crowded San Mamés where so much “teleworking” was done, as Miguel Pérez and Xabier Garmendia put it.

Infographic sheets

Finally, the most extensive part of ‘A legendary hobby’ – which also includes complete infographic sheets of all the ‘heroes of Seville’ made by Josemi Benítez – is dedicated to the day of the barge, when that “genealogical link” was activated that unites Athletic fans, as Jesús Gómez Peña defines it: «The majority of the red-and-white fans were either not born in 1984, when that title was won, or they were not old enough to remember it. They knew about the barge through hearsay, from their parents’ stories and the recorded images of that crowd that served as a base on both banks of the estuary. The younger ones were nostalgic for something they had not experienced,” he says. And, although we may forget now, it was exactly like that: the story of that penultimate barge, which for so many years was the last, was already beginning to acquire the wavering consistency of legends, and we had to turn to the photos of that day to reaffirm the blurred outlines of memory, whether it was one’s own or inherited.

Let’s hope that the future is not so bloody as to do the same thing again, that we do not have to wait until an uncertain 2064 to take the barge out of the dry dock again. In the worst case scenario, this book would serve as emergency medicine for the inevitable bouts of homesickness, but in reality the display of glorious memories can also be seen as a stimulus to speed things up: something so cool needs to be repeated as soon as possible!