Euros 2024: Spanish fans confident in beating England

“At first my friends and myself thought that the players selected were a very personal choice of the coach and didn’t represent the opinion of most Spaniards,” said Jorge Gallego, a Spain fan in Madrid.

“We didn’t expect to reach the final but throughout the tournament we started to realise that we could go far.”

While an estimated 11,500 Spanish fans have travelled to Berlin for the final, back home giant screens are being installed in parks, sports centres and squares on which to watch it.

Here in Madrid, local authorities have said that, if Spain wins, victory celebrations will take place around the Plaza de Cibeles in the capital’s centre.

Meanwhile, the players are being lauded, among them defender Marc Cucurella, who has become a folk hero thanks to his big hair and an online song about him which has gone viral.

The lyrics feature paella and beer – it’s a chant often heard in the stands of his league club, Chelsea.

The buoyant atmosphere surrounding the football contrasts with Spain’s rancorous and often toxic politics, where the left-wing government and right-wing opposition seldom agree on anything.

The football team provides a rare rallying point. Parties and politicians have celebrated not just the results but the emergence of players, like Lamine Yamal, who turned 17 on Saturday and has turned out to be the star.

This team also represents Spain’s multi-cultural reality. Yamal’s father is Moroccan and his mother is from Equatorial Guinea, while Nico Williams’s Ghanaian parents reached Spain after travelling across the Sahara Desert and scaling a fence that surrounds the enclave of Melilla.