. It is in the DNA and is part of the founding spirit of a team that has words like courage, bravery… and things like that sewn into the neck of the shirt.
But Vallecas didn’t care even though he ended up crying with Isi. The one-goal defeat against Crystal Palace was experienced as a party organized by someone who made half a million Vallecanos happy. Nothing was missing: songs, applause, dances, swirling scarves and insults to the club president took over the streets of southern Madrid.
Many experienced the encounter on the torrid night in kebab shops, hairdressers, bars, and betting shops. .
About 12,000 more people came to the same field they go to every Sunday. The dilapidated Vallecas stadium filled its two and a half stands to watch four screens located in the center of the field. It looked worse than at home, but Vallecas turns a game into a party like no one else. “Fucking Ray, fucking lightning, oe, oe, oe,” the thousands of fans sang every time their team connected two good passes. The only silence of a spectacular night came in the 50th minute when the English team scored.
. Avenida de la Albufera and Calle Payaso Fofó were a white-red river that celebrated the defeat with the respect of someone who lived in hell and fought until the last minute. “We have been happy until May 27. No team in Spain can say that,” summarized Gabriel, a 16-year-old boy as he left the stadium.
It sounds like a cliché about a poor team that celebrated the defeat as a victory. But this is what a neighborhood that is a city, one of the largest in Europe, experienced. Vallecas is used to being David but here Goliath won.
Everything was celebrated. Football and what was not football. The Crystal Palace, in the hands of an American tycoon, is the opposite of Vallecas. The London neighborhood where the team comes from has some of the most expensive homes in the English capital and is a neighborhood recommended to live in by trend magazines. The market value of the English team’s squad is 541.3 million euros compared to 107.3 for Rayo’s. The neighborhoods don’t look alike either. With 12% unemployment, Vallecas is the district of Madrid with the highest unemployment, a figure much higher than the average for the capital, which is 7.9%. In Madrid the average income is 40,000 euros compared to 25,500 euros in Vallecas. But what best describes Vallecas are not the numbers, but the walls of its stadium, the epicenter of the Vallecas party/wake. The walls are covered with posters about talks about Palestine or the face of a candidate for next week’s Colombian elections next to door 11.
In case anyone doubted, in Leipzig and Vallecas they also remembered President Presa in the 13th minute. When the referee blew the final whistle, all the people stood up and began to applaud with respect for the screen.
