The glorious title is due to a shrewd journalist who was part of that bizarre green-and-white expedition. From Russia to Murcia. This is how Pepe Álvarez described the equinoctial journey of Currobetis from the firmament of winning the Copa del Rey and walking undefeated through half of Europe to fall into the hells of the Second. The fall took place on March 15, 1978. The scene of the trap, the Lenin Stadium in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital where the Macareno communist Pepe Díaz took his own life. It was quite a trap against Dynamo Moscow. Betis coach Iriondo, who feared this Napoleonic trap, even wanted to talk to Breznev. In Soviet Iberia, in that city that the Mexican Sergio Pitol portrays wonderfully in a travel book, the European adventure of Real Betis Balompié ended. From Russia to Murcia.
When the uniprovincial political earthquake occurred, I turned the headline of Pepe Álvarez on The Andalusian Post Office: of Murcia to Russia. Oscar Wilde said that reality imitates art. He did not imagine that this investment of a newspaper headline to portray the butterfly effect of national politics would have such a plausible correlate. Pablo Iglesias is more Russian than Murcian, that is evident, more from the Lenin stadium than from La Condomina.
My friend María Dueñas, before becoming a successful writer, was an English professor at the University of Cartagena. In one of his novels the book by Ramón J. Sender plays a fundamental role Mr. Wytt in Canton. In full republican fervor, Cartagena declared its independence and made it known to the president of the United States of America himself. Murcia has made Cartagena, something as unusual as if Jerez made Cádiz or Gijón played to be the Vetusta de Clarín. It is a powerful land. At Expo 92, the Murcia pavilion had two priority incentives: an impressive display of flowers and products from its garden and Isaac Peral’s submarine, which was brought in a gigantic trailer on the A-92 like Fitzcarraldo’s boat on the Manaus jungle. In the dictionary of the Language, the word Señora has a double meaning: very hot pepper, chilli, and town of Murcia. In La Ñora, Paco García Tortosa was born, translator of the Ulises To Spanish.
In 1978, the same year that Betis traveled from Russia to Murcia, the main headliners of the next elections to the Madrid community were born. The domino effect of the failed motion of censure of the PSOE and Citizens in Murcia. Last year I participated with the novelist’s eldest son in a tribute to Miguel Delibes at the Academia de Buenas Letras. I remembered in such a pandemic year and of such distinguished centenarians (Delibes, Benedetti, Bukowski, Montesinos) that the Delibes century, on October 17, 2020, coincided with two extraordinary events: one, that that weekend, which happened very few times, Madrid and Barça lost in the League to Cádiz and Getafe, respectively; another, that that same day Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Pablo Iglesias were turning 42 years old. The disputed vote of Mr. Cayo flavored with Licor 43.
– .
