Seville couplet

A very busy, exhausting day for Felipe VI . In the morning, he attended the funeral of an Argentine Pope in Italy, and in the evening, he presided over the funeral of an Italian coach in Spain. Metaphorically speaking, it's understandable. The game lasted three days. It began without the ball on Friday, amid accusations, pouts, and threats, and ended on Sunday with five goals and an ice drone flying toward a human goal with a whistle.

For seven years now, Seville has been, and will likely remain so for a few more because everyone likes it, the monarchical seat of Spanish football. And since the advent of crowned democracy, it has been the capital of Andalusia. It is so by demographics, history, and poetic possibilities. Demographics aren't so important. There are a few Autonomous Communities whose capital isn't located in the most populated city. Oviedo has fewer inhabitants than Gijón, Santiago than La Coruña, Vitoria than Bilbao, etc. Regarding history, Cádiz or Granada could argue about it.

But poetically, from the deepest and most authentic Andalusian folklore for domestic solace, or the superficial and falsified for tariff-free export, there is no other color than that of Seville for constructing the copla and the coplilla. Seville rhymes with maravilla, banderilla, mantilla, manzanilla, and seguidilla. With that, we already have half a finished poem. It writes itself in imitation, a bit riffic, it's true, of the romantic rhymes of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer , who was from Seville. Just like Antonio and Manuel Machado, Luis Cernuda, Vicente Aleixandre , and so many others. There is a lyrical quarry on the banks of the Guadalquivir.

Seville is a very poetic city. It was at its Ateneo that the Generation of '27 was founded in December 1927: Rafael Alberti, Federico García Lorca, José Bergamín, Dámaso Alonso, Jorge Guillén, Gerardo Diego ...

On the eve of the match, it must have rhymed with "pill." The tranquilizer Lexatin or something similar that everyone should have taken before speaking, sobbing, or writing. But it rhymed with "braid" in the voices and whimpers of Burgos Bengoetxea and González Fuertes , untimely, inopportune denouncers of what we might call the "white mud razor." And with "guerilla," the same type of confrontation that, from the programming schedule of Real Madrid television, Florentino Perez's squad leaders maintain against the refereeing gang. They must be read the riot act. Meanwhile, the story of Negreira , which politically rhymes with "Waterloo," is mothballed. It neither rhymes assonantly nor consonantly. Dissonant.

In football terms, Sevilla rhymed with nightmare for a Real Madrid side that has already received two slaps this season. One on each cheek: the Champions League and the Copa del Rey. The final blow, the final blow to the chin, the final blow to the La Liga, has yet to come. They cling to the possibility of avoiding it. If they don't manage to do so, they would completely bend the knee in a disastrous season, according to the scale of demands that quite rightly characterize the club and its fans. A cheap campaign.

On Saturday, all roads led to Rome. And all rhymes, to Seville.