Stubborn Stuff: Through the Vomitorio to New Madridista

Quixotic, Not-intimidated Galatasaray fan.

A “vomitorio” could be a place that ancient Roman bulimics gathered. It might be a term used in teen movie reviews as in “it was like so awesome and bloody, so, so vomitorio …” Or it could be a large passageway through which thousands of people march after paying 30 Euros or more for the privilege.

Spanish soccer fans know that it is the latter, and on August 24, 2011, I was one of the many who crowded through vomitorios at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium to watch a game featuring the legendary club Réal Madrid. I was looking forward to the experience, but also a little apprehensive. The Berabéu Stadium, I was told, can hold over 85 thousand spectators and is often sold out for the games that feature the adored home team. In Canada, we have passionate, nutty, and lamentably, on occasion, aggressive hockey fans, and lots of them, but never concentrated in these numbers in such an intense space and never with the same specific kind of intertwining of self-interest with sports fan fervor.

Perhaps, the Montreal Canadians at its apex in the 1950s ad 1960s enjoyed a similar kind of sports success, but Réal Madrid has a special eminence that extends beyond its role as the home team and its impressive on-the-field history. Its string of past championships, nevertheless, cannot be easily overstated. Madrid is not merely the winningest professional soccer club in Spanish history; it was formally recognized by FIFA as the greatest team in terms of such victories in the 20^th century.

This alone is enough to redefine the substance of home town pride and prompt many sports fans elsewhere to seek residency in Madrid even though some might argue the team’s hey day has passed.

Game Time - 10:30 P.M.

But the quality that might give Réal Madrid a powerful place in the hearts of its fans is not civic pride, but pride of ownership. The team, like a few others, is the property, not of a corporation controlled by shareholders, but a Society of individual members, many of whom are ordinary fans, who gain from their standing as quasi-owners with reduced ticket prices and other benefits. Even though there said to be some 60 thousand members or “socios” in this Club, membership is considered a special status with the children and grandchildren of current members having priority for any new openings to the Club. This corporate structure gives “Réal” meaning to the team’s most recent definition of success - as the top team in the world in terms of annual revenues. It wins games, makes money, and benefits its fans directly and financially.

“Passion for Réal Madrid is not one of the world’s great mysteries,” a British tourist told me at the hotel bar while providing me with the above background on the team. “The real question is why would someone not want to be a fan ?"

Then after a pause, he added "unless, of course, they live in Barcelona.”

Madrid games, which are regularly sold out, often do not start until 10:30 PM, a reasonable nod to the daytime heat, but my reaction to seeing the kick-off time on my ticket was to think first of how long the bars would have been open and how crowded the Metro would be at both ends of the game. The prospect of tens of thousands of cerveza-filled, financially committed soccer fans funneling into the Stadium area late at night suggested that I should know in advance where I was going to be sitting, to arrive and leave either very early or very late to avoid the craze and crush.

It was with these thoughts that I earnestly studied my ticket, which I ordered on the Internet and retrieved from a ServiCaxia machine at the Stadium the day before the game. You can pay up to 300 if you like to sit close enough to smell the players. But because my ambition was to see the crowd as much as the game, I bought a seat high up in the stands at the relatively cheap price of 27 Euros (). The ticket said Puerta 45, Asiento 012, Fila 011, Sector 1433, and – Vomitorio 315-N.

I determined with the help of my dictionary that I was to enter Gate 45 and sit in Seat 12 in Row 11 of Sector 1-433. I did not find a definition for “vomitorio,” but assumed it was different than a Section and hoped it had nothing to do with beer or gagging.

The game on August 24, 2011 was a “trophy match:” a single-game annual “non-schedule,” “friendly event for none other than the Santiago Berabéu trophy. I know little of soccer so had to research a bit to appreciate the opponent for the night: Galatasaray, a club from Instanbul that has also had its share of victories over the years and was a worthy contestant for the Berabéu trophy. I wanted to see the crowd and the opening so I decided to come about an hour early instead of arriving late.

There is a Metro station right at the stadium, but I walked up to it from one stop away to avoid a transfer and the pinched end of the funneling mass pouring into the square. At 9:00 P.M. the streets encircling the Berabéu Stadium were already packed, and I had to focus and keep my sights fixed on my assigned vomitorio in order to weave through people yelling, horns, noise, and a midway gauntlet of snacks and souvenir stands. Police on the backs of edgy horses stood by the fences as if anticipating trouble, inside armed police officers lined one side of the stadium, and security staff rimmed the entire field at different points in the game. But I think now that this was mainly for show.

There was the intimidating crush of a crowd on the move for sure and lots of noise and liveliness during the game. But other than the constant screeching of tires and baring of bus horns around the intersections outside, there was nothing to suggest anything dangerous about the crowd or the environment.

At about the ten minute mark, the Turkish team scored the first goal and seemed to have the upper hand in the early part of the game. Not knowing much about the current rankings or judged strengths of the teams, I was impressed.

But what struck me more was the fact that there were a number of evident, vocal, and passionate Galatasaray fans in the crowd. One of them sitting next to me. None of them, whose cultural ancestors may have been on the thorny end of the Inquisition and other periods of tension, seemed intimidated by their blatant minority position in the sea of mad Madridistas.

On the other side of my seat, a man with three pre-teen boys of varying sizes such that I imagined them all to be his sons sat and shouted. They struck me as a group that would not be out of place in any ice rink in Canada even though they were making “EYE – EEH” and “OO-YAY” sounds that I never heard at a hockey game, and otherwise familiar-to-hockey fans “bump-bump, bump-bump-bump, bump-bump” stomping of feet was punctuated with “Ha la, Ma – dreeth.”

It seemed clear that this crowd was here not to drink, fight, or abuse others, but because they loved their team, their town, their game. I wanted to be one of them.

The storied home team came back with two goals and held on to properly win the game and the trophy named for their former president and stadium.

I did not witness the celebration or aftermath because, true to my timorous plan, I did leave early.

Only by fifteen minutes, but enough to make me stand out in the crowd of close to seventy thousand.

Given the overall family friendly atmosphere, I am sure that the game ended with no pushing, no problems, no fighting, and no vomiting in the vomitorios - unless the sight of a novice Madridista slipping out of the stadium early made a few hard core part-owner fans nauseous.