Michael Robinson’s Guide to Spain
“I love Spain, it’s my home,” beams Michael Robinson, Republic of Ireland striker turned Spanish TV presenter.
“In fact,” he grins, leaning forward, a cloud of cigarette smoke spiralling skyward, “I reckon I might be Spanish. I’ve been able to trace my roots down to County Cork in 1732 and then there’s nothing left because the British came over and burnt it down. But everybody there is white with ginger hair and freckles, except about two percent who are darker, swarthier – they’re the descendants of the Armada on their way home after getting hammered. No one in my family has ginger hair and freckles and the Armada came from two places – Galicia and Cadiz – so I reckon I must be from Cadiz.”
It’s a cunning theory and, right or wrong, who better to introduce us to the real Spain?
Speaking the lingo
“For me, the key to learning Spanish was that until Sammy Lee came to Pamplona I only met two people who could speak English so I had no choice. I walked around with verb tables and dictionaries and the team would use me as a toy. They’d send me to the bar to ask for ‘six hijos de puta [sons of bitches]’. I’d read phrases in my books and go into training and say: ‘Hello, how are you?’ You’ve got to ask loads of questions. I was really boring for them but I paid them back by being their toy. Every day I found another piece of the jigsaw. I learnt loads straight away then came to a plateau. I found it hard to get the tenses then suddenly it clicked and I started climbing again. The nice thing about Spanish is it’s easy to write once you know a couple of rules; it’s very phonetic.”
My favourite place
“Cadiz. It’s the oldest civilization in Western Europe. It was called Gades and it’s still around – it’s just that it’s under the water. They still find pots and things like that. It’s a peninsula that feels like an island, like a frying pan – the handle, the pan, and water all around it. They call it Little Havana and in one of the James Bond films all the sequences in Havana are actually done in Cadiz. It has the most humble, open people. They’re spontaneous, natural and they love football. There are 120,000 people in the city and yet we’ve filled our ground for 47 months consecutively. It’s a lovely place, surrounded by sand, with pescaito [fried fish], tortilla, nice fruity white wines. A place to go and get lost in, miles away from anywhere.”
Something for the weekend
“If you’ve got just one weekend in Spain, go to Seville. It is the most beautiful place you can imagine. Everyone loves it. Great food, good hotels, great golf courses, great nightlife with everything open forever, great climate. I wouldn’t dream of going in the summer when it’s roasting, but it’s a romantic city where you can walk around and literally pick oranges off the trees. If you’re there, you have to go to a tablao, not to see flamenco as such but sevillanas, the local dance. And, of course, it has two football teams that generate great atmosphere. One thing you have to see in Seville? Betis.”
The case for bullfighting
“I came here totally anti-bullfighting because I didn’t understand it. But if I could be any animal, I’d be a fighting bull because you live five years like God. Then you get thrown into the ring but at least you get to have a go. One of my best friends is Antonito, one of the greatest bullfighters ever, so I understand it now. I’ve been in front of a bull too – well, a cow weighing 500 kilos with horns. I was there with a cape and I was scared to death – I had to burn my trousers afterwards! But I did nine passes. It was like a training session and a character test at the breeders’ ranch. They check out the cows so they know which ones to breed with which bull. People talk about genetic engineering, but it’s been going on for years in the bullfighting.”
Running with the bulls
“I’ve been to San Fermín – I lived in Pamplona after all – but I would never run with the bulls. The most frightening bit is calle Estafeta. At the start, the men can outrun the bulls and they get cocky, but uphill bulls are quicker because their front feet are shorter than the back ones – and calle Estafeta is a slope. All of a sudden, the bulls start really fucking travelling but the runners are slowing down. I’ve seen one tragic episode: there was a bottleneck and the bulls piled into people. I was watching spurts of blood fly up all over the place; about seven or eight died. San Fermín is good on the first three days but Pamplona is a city of 160,000 and that week there’s about 900,000 there. They don’t all fit, they sleep on the streets, never go to bed and by the time you get to the 13th or 14th day it’s a bit grim.”
Lost in Galicia
“Galicians are the only people who answer questions with a question, they can never give a straight answer. I once got a letter from someone in a place called Begeira who had two cows that played football, asking me to go and film there. We went, but the place wasn’t really a place; it was just a post office and a farm with two cows that played football. We were getting lost so we stopped at a real postcard village with two men with berets and walking sticks sitting on this bench and I wound down the window and asked the way. The guy says: why? Which says it all.”
Fiesta! Fallas in Valencia
“Fallas is the noisiest thing in the world. It makes bonfire night look like a Sunday afternoon stroll. I’m pretty sure there was less noise on the first night of bombing Baghdad. You can NEVER go to sleep: the windows shake, there’s so much noise. The burning of the effigies is incredible, though: it’s like Madam Tussauds with knobs on. They say Valencia is the home of the three-fingered handshake and the fireworks tradition lives on when they win football games too. I remember them beating the Arsenal in the Champions League and going bloody berserk.”
Food: what to eat
“Mediterranean shellfish is sweeter than in Galicia and I love the fried fish down there, but I prefer Galician seafood. There’s nothing like the Basque Country with its meats, but I’m a fan of Valencian rice. Not paella, which I think is over-rated and over-popular – and, don’t forget, paella originally emerged as a rice dish with the leftovers from everything else. I prefer arroz abanda: rice cooked with the seafood stock. Fabulous.”
Food: when to eat it
“It took me a three years to get used to the etiquette of eating times. In England, I used to watch Question Time before I went to sleep at about 11. When I came to Pamplona we’d go for dinner and meet at 10 o’clock. I couldn’t do it, I was falling asleep. And if you went to a bar, forget it. We couldn’t have a drink because nowhere was open until midnight with not a soul around until 1.30. I was knackered. I love it now, mind.”
The perfect siesta
“The key to a good siesta? A fucking big lunch. When I’m commentating on a game on Sunday night, I’ll go down to the restaurant in the hotel have a nice big lunch, a bit of white wine, a gin and tonic. Get a belly full, get horizontal and I’m off to sleep. It’s easy to sleep with your belly full; I’m not saying it’s healthy, but it’s easy.”
Bars: saying "when"
“Bar culture here is far better. I used to love bars in Spain but I can’t really go to them any more in Spain because I get so much hassle so I tend to go to hotel bars that are quieter. The other day I saw a barman pouring this English girl a gin and tonic and she was there going: ‘Stop, stop, stop!’ He looked at her like she was mad. A Spaniard will never tell you to stop pouring – when in Spain don’t say when! I also like the fact that they give you a drink and you don’t have to pay until you leave. It’s nicer the Spanish way. Besides, you’re not going to run away when you’ve had one of those measures.”
The perfect football day out
“The Basques are the most knowledgeable fans in Spain and Athletic Bilbao have the most romantic of all football policies, only playing with Basques. They call the ground the Cathedral and it’s very similar to Anfield – they’re loyal to their team but they applaud the rivals. The other good thing is that, along with San Sebastian (home of Real Sociedad), Bilbao has the best food and the best bars, and at half-time everyone gets their sandwiches out and their flasks of wine – you’re not supposed to drink in a football stadium but laws are there to be broken. If I wanted to be drenched in an afternoon’s football, the ideal day would be: wake up in Bilbao, read the press with a coffee while everyone around me is talking about the game, get dressed, have lunch – the best meat, the best tapas, the best wine, the best gin and tonics in Spain, the best cider – and then mosey along to la catedral.”
Spanish stadiums
“Stadiums in Spain are as diverse as the nation. With the Basques, the gallegos, the Catalans, madrileños, navarros, asturianos, being Spanish doesn’t necessarily exist and all those regional traits come out in a football stadium. Camp Nou has the greatest concentration of fur coats, cashmere sweaters and silk ties in Spain. The fans go there in the hope that the standard-bearer of Catalunya wins, never too sure what to applaud at, what to get excited about and what to get angry about. It’s this amazingly massive stadium that’s actually very quiet unless Madrid play there. People go as if they were going to the theatre.”
Understanding Madrid
“Madrid is a proper city. God, I love it. It’s fantastic. It’s got to be one of the only cities in the world where there are traffic jams at three in the morning. A great, fun place. They bring all the best food from the rest of the country and it’s such a fun place to watch football.
The Santiago Bernabeu is the closest thing I’ve known to the Coliseum of Rome. The fans are very critical of their own, it’s very much a thumbs-up, thumbs-down thing. You get sentenced at the Bernabeu. Being a Madrid fan is about status too. You’ll get into an argument about football in a bar and the Madrid fan will take his wallet out and produce his membership card, so you know you’re not speaking to just anyone.
Madrid fans think that being Madrid fans make them someone which irritates the Atletico fans, who are the complete opposite; they’re the only team in the world whose aim is to lose. It proves they care more. It’s masochism, like an Easter parade where they’re marching through the streets flogging themselves. I’ve never seen Atletico fans so unhappy as the year they won the double. They’re nicknamed the pupas [gaffed one], and they’re like a stray dog with fleas and wonderful, sad eyes staring up at you. They’ll never win Crufts, whereas Real Madrid won’t even compete at Crufts if they don’t think they are going to win it. I have moments when I think: God, I like Atletico.”
The football press
“Journalism should be a vocation: brave, eloquent people who go and cover news stories and relate it back. Instead what the editors on the sports papers do is sell newspapers. How does an editor create money? He makes a mathematical decision: I have to tell madridistas what they want to hear. It’s heartbreaking. I’d like people to be communicators but instead it’s about selling newspapers to Madrid fans or Barça fans. One of the nice things about my show is that when I go the Bernabeu they call me a Barça fan and when I’m in Barcelona they accuse me of being a Madrid fan. I’m proud of being uncomfortable every time I go to a football stadium.”
Spanish telly
“The Salsa Rosa [gossip shows] are truly awful. People seem fascinated by the fact that someone can go on telly and call someone else a prostitute. It pisses me off that I think hard about how to communicate, but if I just pulled my pants down or spat at the camera, I’d get a huge audience. It’s dreadful that someone can come out of the Big Brother house and become a panellist on some show, imparting judgement on the way people live; that they get paid more if they slag people off or call people whores. To let a bunch of exhibitionist pass judgment is irresponsible, total rubbish. They shouldn’t let these people loose, let alone walk into millions of homes. But it’s post-Franco freedom. After he died, people were suddenly able to speak freely and they got drunk with it, it was like a new toy, like being let lose in Toys R Us.”
The case against shopping
“You’re only a proper town if you’ve got a Corte Inglés, the huge department store. But I can’t go into a shop because I can’t get out; too many people stop me. My wife does it all for me, so if you ever see me wearing something particularly awful you can blame her. I did go Christmas shopping last year, though, and I bought everything on the same street – calle Serrano in Madrid. I got it all at Loewe, who I think is a terrific designer, and one of ours, Spanish. I like wearing Loewe because I feel Spanish.”
The highway code
“A bit of advice: in Spain, traffic lights are just clues. I remember being at a traffic light with my ex-boss and him saying to me: ‘There’s nothing coming, Michael!’ I said, ‘But it’s red’ and he replied, “Let me tell you something – you have more chance of being stopped by a police officer for being a dickhead. Just go!” I lost my traffic light virginity that night.”