Spain Win The World Cup: The view from Alcúdia

In the end, Iniesta. In the end it didn't matter that it was no great final. In the end it didn't matter to the millions who will have spilled out onto the streets across Spain, just as they did in Puerto Alcúdia.

The car horns had been going off well before the match started. Is it possible that car horns can lose their horn? If they can, they will have by now. In the end and at the end it was not just the street sides that were full of flag-waving, so were the roads, right down the middle, right around the roundabouts. I came close to ending up in hospital, or worse, as I crossed the road by the Magic roundabout and a motorbike came haring around at high speed, seemingly the only road user unaware that something remarkable had happened.

And it was remarkable. Even for anyone with no interest in football, he or she could surely not have been overtaken by the outpouring of joy and euphoria. It was the greatest fiesta of all, and one not programmed by an organising committee. Fireworks went off, wherever; the people's party.

The Mile was packed. A cavalcade of flag-waving, horn-blowing cars jammed the road, as did the onlookers, cheering and crying with ecstasy. Near to Magic, the customised chainsaw with its loudhailing amplifier was roaring, being played like a guitar to passing cars and behind a police bike rider. The lorry that doubled as a float was getting more and more loaded. Kids, with no obvious sign of parents, were throwing themselves onto the dewy grass of the roundabout in an abandon of happiness. Everyone was going mental.

Yet amidst all this, bizarrely other life was going on. A group of tourists outside the Delfin Azul with their suitcases, waiting for their transfer coach; a late-night supermarket, moving the lilos inside. It is at times like a World Cup final, a World Cup final in a Spanish town, that it is hard to believe that anything else could actually matter.

In the end it didn't matter that De Jong should have been sent off, it didn't matter that Spain never really played that well throughout the whole tournament. What did matter was that Spain won. And to have been amongst it was astonishing. There was a sense of gatecrashing someone else's party, but it didn't matter; far from it, as Germans, Brits, Swedes and others joined in and revelled in one of the greatest nights most will ever experience.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.