The summer of 2008 had also seen those perennial footballing underachievers Spain triumph at the European Football Championships held in Switzerland and Austria. This was accompanied by much discussion of the so-called ‘new Spaniards’ who were, if we were to believe media coverage, setting aside traditional nationalist rivalries to unite behind
the Spanish national team (‘Spain revels in new spirit of unity as football team heals division’, Observer, 29 June 2008), while on the tennis courts of London and Beijing, Spain’s Rafael Nadal’s success at both Wimbledon and the Olympics helped showcase the growing global sporting image of that country. In the UK, by way of contrast, tennis player Andy Murray’s Wimbledon tournament saw the British media increasingly fi xated about the need to label the tennis star as Scottish and/or British (or more accurately a Brit), all of which led one media commentator, Alan Ruddock, to note:
It confi rms that the British media is, in reality, a London media, or at the very least an English media. The label [Brit] represents annexation, not appreciation, and confi rms the prejudices of those who believe that London’s editors have no knowledge of, or interest in, affairs outside the centre. (Observer, 6 July 2008)