Not the Win I Expected

Spain advanced. But that isn't what I'm celebrating most.

Sometimes, the parenting moments that mean the most are the least dramatic.

I’m in Barcelona with my kids. It’s the first time I’ve traveled outside of the country alone with them, and the only Spanish words I know are “hola,” “por favor” and “gracias,” so I’ll admit I’ve been nervous. But it’s been wonderful. Everyone has been welcoming, the food has been delicious, and the weather has been great (though hot!).

When I decided on this trip back in March, I knew that we’d be here during the semifinals of the World Cup. My son, who is 15, has been obsessed with soccer for at least a decade. Most of the gifts he requests for Christmas and his birthday revolve around it; he organizes his schedule around the Premier League and Champions League matches. And he’s always adored Spain’s national team.

So for three months, we desperately hoped that Spain would make it to the semifinals. Sure, the matches themselves would take place in the U.S., but we were thrilled by the possibility of being in Spain while Spain was playing. I told my son that if Spain made it to the semifinals — or even if they didn’t — we’d probably be able to watch the matches in public squares surrounded by Spanish fans. We talked about our Barcelona soccer-watching plans at least once a week leading up to our visit.

And then, magically, Spain advanced to the semifinals.

We arrived in Barcelona last Saturday, giddy with anticipation. Our very first purchases, the afternoon we arrived, were Spain jerseys for me and my daughter — of course, my son already had one. We also got a Spain flag, which my son planned to wear as a cape during the match. I had already done a ton of research on where we could watch it, and, surprisingly, I learned that there were no official watch parties in Barcelona.

Nervous, we asked locals where we could watch the match. The woman who sold us our Spain jerseys said to go to the Plaça de Catalunya, a large central square in Barcelona. They’d either be projecting the match outside, she said, or we could go to one of the large Irish pubs nearby, which she said were rarely busy during soccer matches.

My son had his heart set on watching outside, in the kind of public square I’d been promising him for months. So I crossed my fingers that we could watch it there.

Out of an abundance of caution, we continued researching where to watch the match. There was a city outside Barcelona hosting a watch party, but that seemed far away. Then, somehow, three hours before the match started, I stumbled across an article in The Guardian saying that the public square three minutes’ walk from our apartment — a square we’d already visited multiple times — would be the “#1 place” to watch the semi-final match in all of Spain.

What!?

We were ecstatic. We wouldn’t have to travel anywhere! But we were still cautiously optimistic. My son suggested that we walk over and do reconnaissance. I agreed, so we headed to the square at 6pm the day of the match — three hours before the start time. It was eerily quiet. I went into one of the bars and asked the bartender if they would be playing the match.

He shook his head, confused. Spanish soccer wasn’t a big deal in Barcelona, he said, and our particular neighborhood was among the most indifferent of all.

He suggested we go to Plaça de Catalunya — the same place the woman who sold us the jerseys had suggested. Clearly, this was our best bet.

We ran home, changed, and headed out on the Metro. We noticed we were the only people on the subway wearing Spain jerseys — very odd, but it confirmed what the bartender had told us. Barcelona, it seemed, didn’t really care.

On the Metro, my son wearing the only Spain jersey in sight

When we got to Plaça de Catalunya, I found a tourist booth and asked the man there if the match would be played in the square. He actually laughed at me.

“Uh, no,” he said.

“Okay, well, where can we watch it?” I asked, exasperated.

“Any bar or pub around here,” he said.

it was 7pm. I was worried about my son. He’d had his heart set on watching it outside in a square, and suddenly, that possibility was gone. When he was young, he’d had a tough time with frustration tolerance — when things didn’t go his way, he had huge meltdowns. I knew this match was a Very Big Deal to him, and I was waiting for him to lose his mind.

He didn’t. His attention turned forward, not back: He said ok — let’s find a lively bar where we could watch the match.

We started wandering the streets while I looked up bars and pubs on Google Maps. None of the bars we found had TVs. I started searching specifically for Irish pubs, and one by one we walked to them. The first had a line around the block. The second had space, but when the hostess started ushering us in, she told us kids weren’t allowed. (We’d previously been told that kids were allowed in bars and pubs.) We found a third pub, but it was at capacity and also restricted to people 18 and older.

It was 7:30 p.m. We had nowhere else to go. I braced myself for the crying, the yelling. But they never came.

Instead, my son calmly suggested that we go back to our apartment, order dinner and watch the match there.

Readers, I was floored. FLOORED. My exacting 15-year-old son had calmly pivoted not once, but twice, over an event he’d been dreaming about for months. It was beyond my brain’s capacity to understand. (His dream was largely my fault, by the way: I’d assumed — and all but promised him — that the match would be shown in the plazas. A rookie mom mistake.)

We headed back to the subway the way we’d come. I could not have cared less what we were doing or where we were going — I was just so, so proud. I told my son that I knew he’d had so many expectations for the match, and that it must be frustrating to have the evening unfold so differently from the way he’d imagined. I told him I was really impressed by his calmness and his ability to shift gears. He didn’t say much, but I could tell he heard me and appreciated that I had noticed.

In the end, we got back to the apartment, ordered food, and watched Spain win by ourselves. We took to the streets afterward and got gelato — in the nearby plaza where literally nobody seemed to care about Spain’s win but us. No doubt, we’d have had a much more festive night if we’d stayed in New York. But that was just fine.

The night was nothing like the one we had hoped for. There was no giant screen or roaring crowd — though eating his gelato, my son did wear his flag as a cape as he’d planned. What I’ll remember and celebrate most about that evening is not Spain’s win, but my son’s new ability to face disappointment, take a breath and move forward. It’s the kind of milestone others might not even notice, but it was the biggest win I saw that evening by far.

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