Why is Fernando Alonson such a big hero in Spain?

AN era is coming to a close in Spain. We’ve lived through a generation of world-beaters – but sport being sport, these heroes must eventually give way to younger, fresher limbs.

Pau Gasol dominated American basketball for 18 years (seven with the LA Lakers) and is, rightly, a Hall of Famer.

Swimmer Mireia Belmonte, who turns 35 next week, holds a clutch of world records across multiple disciplines and was the first Spanish woman to win Olympic gold in the pool.

And then, of course, there’s Rafa Nadal – arguably the best tennis player in the world for three decades, an era that included both Federer and Djokovic.

He achieved the Grand Slam in 2010, winning all four majors – the American and Australian Opens, Roland Garros and Wimbledon – in a single season.

Fernando Alonso Diaz belongs up there with the greats. Now in his mid-forties, he’s still driving for Aston Martin.

In 22 seasons he has won 32 Grands Prix and been world champion twice. He’s stood on the podium and sprayed champagne no fewer than 106 times.

What’s less well known is his stellar career as an endurance driver – he has won the Le Mans 24 Hours twice, the only person ever to be both F1 and Endurance World Champion.

And yet Alonso can’t quite escape the ‘what might have been’ tag. When he first won the Formula One title in 2005, he was the youngest driver (24) ever to do so. He was champion again the following year, and the Spanish press went wild. He was Christopher Columbus and Don Quixote combined.

But he never won another world championship. He moved to McLaren in 2007 and was pipped by a single point, losing out to Kimi Raikkonen.

After a couple of lean years he signed for Ferrari in 2010, and was again runner-up – this time to Sebastian Vettel. The same thing happened in both 2012 and 2013. Thereafter, his Formula One career slowly faded.

The press is notorious (and rightly so) for building heroes up only to knock them down.

Alonso is a true champion with real achievements, but the Spanish media paint him as the ‘Nearly Man’ – the driver who never quite fulfilled his early promise. He’s gained a reputation for being short-tempered, an angry competitor who can’t accept his own shortcomings.

But watch him with the other drivers. Spain loves motor sport, and you can often find long-format interviews featuring half a dozen F1 stars chatting together. The younger men clearly revere Alonso – and he comes across as happy, funny, razor-sharp and utterly charming.

So the question arises – why is sport so central to our lives? These young people are not geniuses (Muhammad Ali excepted) and are often not even well educated (just watch British footballers being interviewed!).

Here in Spain, if you live opposite a bar (as I do), you’ll know that on a Sunday evening, when Real Madrid score, the 40 men watching inside let out a Vesuvian roar that startles your cat.

Why does it matter?

I once worked for an English firm in Fuengirola. We office types had it easy, but the warehouse lads had a wretched life. Their job was tedious, and they worked under a metal roof – in summer the heat was unbearable, and in winter the noise of rain hammering down was deafening.

One day I went for a beer with one of them – let’s call him Peter. Peter supported Liverpool. He could reel off statistics, give potted biographies of players past and present, and offer detailed analyses of upcoming games.

It was an education. I realised that for Peter, Liverpool’s matches were the only bright spots in an otherwise barren existence. “We should beat Chelsea at ours – we drew away in November,” he said.

So next time the roar from the bar across the way interrupts your John Grisham novel, think of Peter – and, like me, you might look on their boorishness with a slightly kinder eye.

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