The World Cup is home, and on Monday it arrived in Madrid on the top deck of a bus.
Spain's 26 players landed to a royal welcome and to Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, barely a day after the 1-0 win over Argentina that made them champions of the world for a second time. Per ABC News and the Associated Press, the squad was received on home soil before the trophy was carried through the middle of the capital.
A royal welcome
The homecoming was a state occasion as much as a football one. There was officialdom and flags in equal measure, the kind of reception Spain lays on perhaps once a generation. Sanchez met the players, and the welcome carried the weight the country saves for its rarest days. All 26 made the trip home, the squad Luis de la Fuente led to the title now back where the celebrations belong. This is only Spain's second world crown, and the first since 2010. Sixteen years is a long wait to fill Cibeles again.
The heat did nothing to thin the crowds. Madrid sat at around 35 degrees, 95 in Fahrenheit, and still the streets filled from early in the day, the pavements lost under Spanish flags.
From Moncloa to Cibeles
The open-top bus set off from near the Moncloa Palace, the prime minister's official residence, and inched its way towards Cibeles Square. The destination was never in question. Cibeles is where Spain's national teams have long gone to celebrate, the fountain and the square part of the ritual now, and it is the same place that welcomed the Euro 2024 winners two summers ago.
There the players held their own ceremony, the trophy lifted over their heads, the crowd below in full voice. Ferran Torres, whose extra-time strike off a Nico Williams cross settled the final, had his turn with it. The bus moved at walking pace, by design. Nobody on board seemed in any rush to let the day end.
A nation in red and gold
The party had, in truth, started the night before. After the final whistle, huge crowds packed Puerta del Sol and squares across Madrid, waving flags and setting off flares, red and gold smoke hanging over the rooftops, per Yahoo Sports. The flags did not come out just for the parade; they had barely gone away since Sunday night. Thousands more lined the route on Monday, and by the time the players reached Cibeles the square was a single mass of red and gold.
For a country that had waited 16 years between world titles, the scenes felt earned rather than expected. This Spain gave up almost nothing all tournament. Argentina, the holders, could not manage a single shot on target in the final, and the winners barely had to defend their lead once Torres had found it.
The trophy also completes a set. De la Fuente's side now hold the European Championship they won in 2024 and the World Cup together, a double built around a young core in Lamine Yamal and Pau Cubarsi, both 19.
The bus route ends at Cibeles, and in time the flags will come down. The harder question starts here: this is a young Spain, nearer the start of something than the end, and Madrid may well be asked to do all of this again.
Sources
- ABC News (Associated Press)
- Yahoo Sports
- Cover photo: Leandro Ceruti from Rosta, Italia / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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