Coach: Luis Aragones
Tactics: Like to play attractive football with different tempos.
Star Player: Carles Puyol - strong, commanding and quick. Gives nothing away.
Verdict: Can the current crop change Spain's reputation as under-achievers? Probably not. The squad possesses some wonderful individuals, such as Vicente, Fernando Torres and Raul, but the overall package is never convincing. A good start is essential otherwise familiar doubts will creep in.
Ten things you didn’t know about Spain
1. The world’s biggest food fight, La Tomatina, is held every year in the town of Buñol in Valencia on the last Wednesday in August. Residents and visitors literally paint the town red by pelting each other with tomatoes.
2. Ernest Hemingway, who wrote about the Spanish Civil War in ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ and made famous the San Fermín festival in Pamplona – also known as ‘the running of the bull’ – in ‘The Sun Also Rises’ has a street in the city named after him, Avenida de Hemingway.
3. 94% of the population of Spain is Roman Catholic.
4. Spain’s patron saint, Saint James, is one of the twelve apostles and is said to be buried at Compostela in North West Spain.
5. Christopher Columbus, who many people believe to have been Spanish, was actually from Genoa in Italy. However, his famous voyage to 1492 was financed by Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile.
6. Euskara, the language spoken by the Basque population, is one of the oldest living languages in the world and does not seem to be related to any other known language. However, with the number of people currently speaking Euskara about 700,000, its existence is under threat.
7. Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) was the author of ‘Don Quixote’, regarded by many as the first modern novel.
8. The most expensive seats at a bull-fight – Spain’s traditional and controversial sport – are those in the shade.
9. Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar (1044-1099), otherwise known as El Cid, is a Spanish hero from Castile who fought the Moors in Spain. Legend has it that after El Cid died he was strapped onto a horse and ridden into battle. So afraid was the enemy of this invincible general that they fled.
10. Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, one of the founders of cubism, was greatly moved by the bombing of Guernica by the German Luftwaffe in 1937. When handing out photos of his famous Guernica painting to German Officers in Paris, one of them asked, “did you do this?” He replied, brilliantly, “no, you did.”
