Spain woke up with a UEFA EURO 2008™-sized hangover on Monday after wild celebrations accompanied the national team's first major success in 44 years.
Relief and joy
Fernando Torres's strike at the Ernst-Happel-Stadion on Sunday night proved to be the only goal of the final against Germany, and handed Spain their only major tournament victory since they beat the Soviet Union to win the 1964 UEFA European Championship. Having lost to France in the 1984 final and been branded as underachievers ever since, relief and joy spilled out on to the streets. Elated fans draped in red and yellow Spanish flags thronged the streets in the hot summer evening in Madrid, cheering and shouting "Viva España" as the fiesta began.
'I'm crying'
"I couldn't watch. I can't believe it. They really deserve it," said 38-year-old teacher Eva Lumbreras, coming out of her house in a Madrid suburb to join other revellers outside as fireworks lit up the sky. Cars and motorcycles gridlocked roads, blaring their horns. Thousands of spectators with their faces painted yellow and red cried and hugged each other at the Plaza de Colón, the central Madrid square where the match had been aired on a giant screen. "I'm crying," said 28-year-old telephone engineer Héctor López in a central Madrid bar. "We've been waiting 44 years for this. We had to prove what we could do and we did it. It's going to give the country a lift."
Next step
Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was in no mood to dampen national expectations after watching Luis Aragonés's side claim victory in the Austrian capital alongside King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía of Spain. "This is just the beginning, the best is yet to come," he said in a television interview. "Now we're going for the [FIFA] World Cup."
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