Phil Ball's Spanish Culture excerpt from Morbo-The Story of Spanish Football

I just picked up Morbo-The Story of Spanish Football by Phil Ball last night for the first time in ages. I hope he doesn't mind but I wanted to let you read part of his definition of Spain. I LOVE IT!

"In some ways it (Spain) is a much odder place in reality than it seemed to me when I was a kid. Many Spaniards are still formal and conservative in both dress and manner, but at the same time, wildly anti-authoritarian, giving the poor police and referess a hard time of it. The nouveau middle-classes flock to their gyms to work out, then relax afterwards in the bar in their tracksuits surrounded by plumes of cigarette smoke. Men, women, children and grannies all swear like proverbial troopers, invoking their muse to soil every garment of Catholic sensibility imaginable, only to dress up like Lord and Lady Muck on Sunday morning and stride head high into church as if the Lord had never heard them. Guilt is a grey area, and is consequently a no-go area for the Spanish. Pity the poor outsider who dares to throw into a conversation a mere suggestion of doubt. He or she will more than likely be howled down. To the average Spaniard, publicly at least, there is black and white, and anything in between is limp-wristed and feathery."

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