in Spain, “la Gabarra” capsizes Bilbao again – Libération

A million people gathered on Thursday April 11 along the Nervion to celebrate Athletic’s victory, forty years after the 1984 double. The players and staff paraded aboard a traditional barge.

The wait was long. The party even more beautiful. Dressed in red and white, more than a million people gathered on Thursday April 11 on both banks of the Nervion, a river which crosses the Basque capital, Bilbao. They celebrated Athletic’s victory in the Copa del Rey final on April 6 against Mallorca on penalties. Forty years after the championship-cup double, the club and the city have therefore decided to bring out the Gabarra, this small blue boat which has become legendary since its last crossing of the city in 1984. It is therefore on board this boat, at rest for four decades, that players and staff have paraded in front of a delirious crowd.

❤️ I am beginning to be aware of how lucky I was to experience La Gabarra so close yesterday…

🔝 I could feel them, even hear them when they were going up the stairs

🏆 FINALLY we have lived what our parents and grandparents told us

🦁 He’s going to bring this template out again… pic.twitter.com/I75YsZhCNS

— Dani Aguado (@aguado_dani) April 12, 2024

In the morning, the first supporters, all generations combined, began to settle down along the river to be able to catch a glimpse, even if only for a few seconds, of their heroes. Dressed in striped shirts in the club colors, the teammates of the Williams brothers or Iker Muniain, captain of the Lions, boarded the boat around 4 p.m. With 160 boats, the maximum authorized by the municipality, and on which legends from 1984 were present, the procession set off from the Ria de Bilbao, the mouth of the Nervion and Ibaizábal rivers.

A parade lasting more than three hours

Broadcast on television channels and followed live on social networks, the event took on a national scale. The parade lasted more than three hours. As Gabarra approached the heart of the city, the clamor intensified and the chants in honor of the club rang out louder and louder. After stopping for a few minutes in front of the San Mames stadium to throw flower petals, a tradition in tribute to the deceased, the boat continued on its way to the approaches to the town hall. There, the players were welcomed by elected officials, including the mayor of Bilbao, Juan María Aburto, just before greeting the many supporters present at the bottom of the balcony.

“Thank you for making this day something incredible,” exalted Ernesto Valverde during the evening, interviewed by the Spanish media. For his part, Iñaki Williams couldn’t believe it. “I still have to pinch myself when I see that,” he told a local channel. Iker Muniain was on cloud nine: a local child, he didn’t even know the festivities of 1984: “We talk to you about it, you imagine, you watch videos… but seeing it from the Gabarra, it ‘crazy.”

A symbol of the wealth of the territory

It was a year earlier, when the club won the seventh championship in its history in 1983, that “la Gabarra” was used for the first time. As usual, Athletic Bilbao, which has a policy of only having Basque players in its squad, does nothing like the others. After listening to a song, which mentions this typical ship and symbol of the wealth of the territory at the time, a member of the club’s management decides to use the boat to parade around the city. The Gabarra, which had no engine and could accommodate only sixty people on board, was then renamed Athletic. Since that day, it has only been used to celebrate the victory of the red and white. With its 80 tonnes, 18.5 meters long and 8.5 meters wide, it has even been on display since 2013 at the Maritime Museum in Bilbao. After a great day, the little boat will be able to rest well until the next Lions victory.