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Death in the Cathedral:

mortuary practices in
sport stadiums
Mar iann Va cz i University of Nevada, Reno

This article discusses an emerging mortuary practice: the establishment of columbaria in sport
stadiums, and surreptitious ash dispersal on their playing elds. Focusing on a Spanish-Basque fan
community, I explore ethnographically the beliefs, identications, and experiences that allow fans to
think their insertion, once dead, into a football stadium. Contrary to the view that considers the
mobility of ash remains as a result of increasing individual choice, and decreasing concern with space
and place, ash dispersal in stadiums shows that, while the act is an individual decision, there remains
a great concern with place, and with the acts consequences for the community. Stadiums are
becoming nal resting places precisely because of their pivotal social, communal, and emotional
relevance. In sum, the article argues that individualized approaches to death and dying take
collective forms.

The new San Mams stadium will have a columbarium with funerary urns, where
Athletic Club followers can deposit the ashes of their loved ones. The place will be
about , square metres large, and can accommodate the remains of up to ,
people.1 The startling news was reported in Bilbaos main daily, El Correo, in October
. The idea of a separate room for the cremated remains of Athletic Club fans
emerged that year as plans for the reconstruction of Bilbaos century-old stadium
began. Mortuary practices and business interests were not far apart, even for a club that
privileges communal values over the imperatives of the market.
One urn will cost , euros for one person for twenty-five years, , euros for two persons, and
, euros for a family of four. The ashes will be placed behind a plaque decorated with allegorical
and historical images of the red-and-white club. Those who deposit ashes here can visit this place daily
during opening hours. On game days, it will open two hours before kick-off. The initiative will
strengthen emotional links with fans, and will bring in . million euros for the club over fifteen years.2

The idea of columbaria, the institutionalization of death, in stadiums is pressing

because the alternative is problematic: surreptitious ash dispersal in playing fields.
Some clubs choose to deny the existence of such practices, while others lay down
unwritten rules. They will not prohibit fans from spreading ashes on the sidelines, nor
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636 Mariann Vaczi

will they participate in the process. Fans may spread only a few ounces, not the entire
five to eight pounds left over from an average adult. They should ask permission, and
be discreet about it. Players in European football leagues have complained that the
ashes show on the pitch, which is why many stadiums have established memory gardens
or columbaria. The Spanish Benito Villamarn (Seville) stadium first entertained this
possibility when they realized that they could no longer control the dispersal of ashes:
in just four months, forty people were caught in the act. Germanys Hamburg SV
decided to open its own cemetery after repeated petitions to spread ashes under the
goalpost. Many UK clubs offer funerary services for their deceased members. Arsenals
Armoury Square offers granite stones where fans may leave personalized messages.
Aston Villa has its memory garden completely full. Blackpool allows the burial of urns
on the side of the field, and Bolton Wanderers even has a fan-chaplain who executes the
deposition ceremony.
Discreetly, stadiums are becoming burial sites, which is a development that is not
without embarrassment: how to explain the turning of playing fields into cemeteries?
The City Hall of Bilbao rejected the demand for columbaria in the new San Mams
stadium. No matter how much spirits love Athletic, a representative argued, it is not
proper for a sport facility to become a cemetery.3
But that is exactly where Bilbaos football culture started more than a hundred years
ago: in a cemetery. On what is called the Campa de los Ingleses (Field of the Englishmen), named after the late nineteenth-century English cemetery used by expatriates,
right where the famous Guggenheim Museum stands today, there is an iron plaque on
the pavement commemorating the British importation of the game. It contains a poem
in Basque and Spanish by the local poet Kirmen Uribe:
Field of the Englishmen.
This is where the English used to play.
Here, on a field by the river.
Back then, there was only grass and a small cemetery.
Sometimes the ball flew into the water, and they had to go and fetch it.
If it flew far, they threw stones at it so it comes nearer the bank.
The stones made waves, small waves that became bigger and bigger.
And this is how Athletic played in Lamiako, and then Jolaseta.
And finally, in San Mams.
A wave, and another wave, and another.

Doris, Kellaher, and Neophytou () identify cemeteries as sites of social and

cultural life where visitors maintain kinship relations, think about profound issues, and
perpetuate ethnic identities. They are a place for the dead and the living. In Bilbao it
was the site of death that gave birth to a revitalizing passion that has nourished Basque
identity and community.
The hundred-plus years that have passed between footballs beginnings in a cemetery and the current fantasy to turn the stadium into a burial ground have seen two
major cultural shifts: decreasing religious practice and the increasing replacement of
inhumation by cremation. In the past, the cultural domains of playing field and cemetery were clearly separated. Even if the same field was occasionally used for both
purposes, there was no question about where the dead should be laid to rest. In todays
context, where sport fandom is often likened to religious practice (Brody ; Edwards
; Higgs & Braswell ; Prebish ), and where the purity, immateriality,
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formlessness, and mobility of ashes stand in contrast with the defilement, materiality,
form, and immobility of the corpse, the once separate domains of cemetery and playing
field are obfuscated through a fantasy where the sacred and the profane, the individual
and the communal, the ritual and the ludic collate in a single field in terms of both place
and cultural semantics.
Deathscapes (Hartig & Dunn ; Kong ) are constantly changing constructs,
complex sets of beliefs and practices that reflect a cultures particular ethos and cosmological vision. Corpses may be burned or buried. Human and animal sacrifice may
be involved. Bodies are smoked, embalmed, pickled or eaten raw, cooked or rotten; they
are exposed or simply abandoned (Huntington & Metcalf : ). Death may effect
orchestrated emotions of grief (Radcliffe-Brown ), or a repression of visible emotions as a defence mechanism (Scheper-Hughes ). It may turn into a bacchanalian
celebration (Bloch ), or lead to compulsive head-hunting to soothe grief (Rosaldo
). It is often suggested that in Western societies, emerging disposal and memorization strategies are increasingly informed by private introspection and family negotiation as opposed to traditional religious ceremonies and belief systems. Once the
churchyard is no longer considered the only meaningful place to deposit human
remains, survivors consider alternative sites for the dead, and for memorialization.
Natural beauty spots, gardens (Prendergast, Hockey & Kellaher ), woodland
(Clayden & Dixon ), private land (Gittings & Walter ), or the home
(Wojtkowiak & Venbrux ) are selected on the basis of the personalized preferences
of the deceased and the bereaved. The nature of death (homicide, accident, disaster,
tragedy) may prompt spontaneous productions of memorial places and shrines to
commemorate victims, and help people cope with trauma (Foote & Grider ;
Petersson ).
Given the portability of ashes, a central question in studies of contemporary
memorialization practices has been whether they enable disposal strategies which no
longer reflect concerns with space and place particularly those associated with traditional burial grounds (Prendergast et al. : ). Studying ash dispersals in stadiums, this article argues, suggests the opposite. While the act of ash dispersal is an
individual decision, there remains great concern with both place and the consequences
of death for the community. Stadiums satisfy the concern with place because there exist
certain key linkages. San Mams is a place of emotion, where tens of thousands of locals
pulsate with intense passion every other weekend, ranging from suffering to happiness.
It is a place of identity and memory, where the city constructs its character and moral
community through centenarian currents of narrative, ritual, and shared experience.
And finally, the soccer stadium is a place of symbolism and iconicity: the birth, death
and resurrection of players and the team during games is an experience from which
passing, transition and revival can draw a paradigmatic analogy. The ups and downs of
competition are often conceptualized as transitions between life and death, which
allows fans to think their own transition from dead to alive through the evocative
power of the game, and their reinsertion as dead in the social order. Ash dispersals in
stadiums are not only past- and memory-orientated. They are an act of magic believed
to have consequences for the future of the community: as the dead remain socially alive,
they should favourably influence games, team performance, and the well-being of the
community.
I spent twenty months (-) in Bilbao conducting ethnographic fieldwork for a
larger anthropological project on Basque football culture. My attention turned towards
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the theme of death gradually through various revelatory incidents: the Catholic tropes
that surround Bilbaos stadium and football culture; informants vision of the apocalypse of the city in -, when the team was on the verge of losing its first division
status; the allegorical equivalence fans draw between the teams performance, its death
and resurrection, and their own life events; the role of death in the inheritance of club
membership; and an informants ash dispersal ritual. This article draws from approximately two hundred interviews, as well as data from daily interaction with fans over an
extended period of ethnographic immersion in Basque culture.
Bilbaos football madness

Bilbaos San Mams stadium is widely known as la Catedral, the Cathedral of first
division Spanish football. Until its demolition and replacement with San Mams Barria
(new) in , it was the oldest stadium in the Spanish first division, a tourist destination in its own right: sport fans and players note its special, mystical atmosphere
with reverence, its field pregnant with history, its walls breathing football. Fans look
at the Cathedral as Bilbaos privileged quality place (Fernandez ) of shared
passion and communion, and, increasingly, as a final resting place.
The clubs main source of pride and identity rests in its filosofa, a recruitment
philosophy that is unique in todays elite sport: Athletic contracts only local, Basque
players. A footballer is eligible to play if he was born in the territory of the historical
Basque Country, or he was trained in one of the academies of a Basque football club.
Commentators note the subversive (Castillo ) character of fielding local players in
an elite global soccerscape (Giulianotti : ) that thrives on athlete migration.
Athletic rejects the post-modernization and globalization of football (Groves ), and
insists on its local enjoyment. Popular media package it as a proud, romantic club
resisting the currents of the world. The Clubs second main axis of identification is the
fact that it has never sunk to the second division since the inception of the Liga in ,
a laudable achievement considering that the Spanish first division is arguably the most
competitive in the world. Because of its filosofa, Athletic Club is one of the most salient
expressions of Basque identity in Spain (MacClancy ; ; Walton ; ).
These two factors combine to create the particularly tight bond that Bilbainos have with
their club and players, who are often friends, family, neighbours, or former classmates.
In this bar you can smoke and curse and talk politics. The only thing you cant do
is badmouth Athletic. This sign, displayed in various bars in Bilbao, is taken with
portentous seriousness: Athletic is the citys untouchable, of which substantial criticism, as a journalist admits, is practically unpublishable. In Bilbao, which has suffered deeply from ideological divisions and the political violence of ETA, the club is
jealously guarded as the sole institution that unites people: gender, age, class, religion,
and political affiliations notwithstanding, todos somos del Athletic, we all support
Athletic.
This statement gains nuance in historical perspective. The opulent Bilbaino bourgeoisie founded the club in , which had two determining consequences for its
identity: an elitist leaning in terms of management and membership, and a symbolic
association with Basque nationalism. Athletic Club shared leadership with the centreright Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), established only three years before. While never
formally linked, Basque nationalists of this party line still claim a special connection
with the values of Athletic Club. A Bilbaino de pro [a real Bilbaino], high-ranking PNV
politician Andoni Ortuzar told me, is an aficionado of three things: the Virgin of
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Begoa [Bilbaos patron], the PNV, and Athletic. Basque nationalists of the political left
support Athletic because its recruitment philosophy maps onto their particular
political-geographical imaginary: the historical Basque Country of three French
Basque and four Spanish Basque provinces.
One does not have to be either ethnic Basque or Basque nationalist to follow
Athletic. Non-Basque immigrants who arrived in Bizkaia province from all over Spain
in search of industrial jobs in the s and s became Athletic fans organically as
they settled and integrated. Many of them had already been fans: the significance of
Athletics sporting history earned it many followers all over Spain. It is even possible to
be a Spanish nationalist and an ardent Athletic fan: I am a Spanish-Basque, Antonio
Basagoiti, Basque Country politician of the right-wing, pro-Spain Popular Party (PP),
told me in his Bilbao office decorated with photos taken in San Mams. I support
Athletic for its healthy, integrating localism. Another fan, who runs an Athletic pea
(fan club) bar in Madrid, told me he supported Athletic because it only recruits
Spanish players. For these fans, the all-Basque roster is not just Basque, or not primarily
Basque, but Spanish.
Below and beyond the projections that allow Athletic to be a team for all seasons,
a lingering criticism concerns its hegemony as cultural performance. People think
that by rooting for Athletic they have done their share of civic duty and belonging,
a Basque language activist told me. They neglect other pressing issues such as the
improvement of Euskera [the Basque language is spoken only sporadically in Bilbao].
Anti-football sentiments have their origins in the repressive Franco regime (-),
which used the sport to suppress political discontent. In the s, a former activist
in the orbit of ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, Basque Country and Freedom) told me,
it was politically incorrect for us leftist abertzale [nationalists] to support Athletic.
We rejected football because Franco used it as an opium of the people . Furthermore, the rampant capitalism of the football world still poses a dilemma for fans of
this leaning.
Changing ways of death in the Spanish Basque Country

In his now classic ethnography Death in Murlaga (a small village near Bilbao),
Douglass () uses the theme of death as a heuristic device through which to
approach rural Basque society. In an elaborate cycle of Catholic rituals and ceremonies,
social obligations of the bereaved depended on domestic, neighbourhood, or kindred
relations, as well as gender. An important aspect of mortuary practices was a burial plot
(first real, then symbolic) on the church floor: the sepulturie. The sepulchre maintained
social continuity, as it belonged not to particular families but to farmstead-based
domestic units, baserriak or etxeak, whose integrity was protected by single inheritance
laws. The fact that the etxea and the sepulchre constituted an indissoluble item guaranteed the dwellers the right to be buried with their ancestors. Death in the rural
Basque Country, Douglass argues, in an ethnography that was later criticized for a
narrow focus on social structure and a disregard of emotion (Rosaldo ), serves to
perpetuate domestic, kindred, and neighbourhood relations, as well as communal
solidarity.
In the rural areas, the local parish priest is the Church, and his interpretation of
religion is the doctrine, Douglass wrote (: ) of the Catholicism of the Basques.
William A. Christians Visionaries () is an impressive account of Catholicism
embedded in the rural Basque Country, populated with some of the most noted sites of
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Marian apparitions and pilgrimage routes in Europe. Historically, this devout rural
culture harboured a particular suspicion towards the anticlericalism of Spains
progressive governments at least from the first Carlist War (-). In , the
deceased kings brother Carlos turned against the liberal monarchy, and promised his
supporters to restore local, regional liberties, and to maintain the power of the Catholic
Church (Christian : ). The importance of these promises led Basques to fight
another two Carlist Wars in that century. Catholicism was also a determining factor for
the Basque nationalist movement catalysed by the urban Bilbaino industrial elite at the
end of the nineteenth century. The Basque Nationalist Party is called Euzko Alderdi
Jeltzalea (EAJ), or Basque Party of Supporters of God and Old Laws. During the
Franco dictatorship and its aggressive national-Catholic agenda, the rural Basque clergy
constituted local cells of Basque nationalist resistance, effectively turning against the
Francoist Spanish Catholic Church.
However, the strengthening of leftist, anti-religious ideologies through ETA notably
destabilized the hold of Catholicism. This organization also inspired some alternative
mortuary practices removed from Catholic practice. Aretxaga () explores the role
of women in the dispersal of their militant sons ashes. Their mortuary rituals took
place in the spirit of the nationalist cause, which, as Aretxaga remarks elsewhere (),
was a determining identity for the ETA subject. Their ashes were dispersed in mountains and by the sea from an ikurrina (Basque national flag) at a ritual composed of
nationalist symbols, songs, and narratives.
More broadly, the Basque Country is undergoing a transformation, resulting in a
hybrid post-religious cultural sphere of residual Catholic tropes and declining professions of faith. Catholic iconography remains engraved in the culture of everyday life
even for the non-religious: saints days celebrations and local virgin cults thrive. In ,
however, only per cent of Basque youth (- years) declared themselves practising
Catholics, and per cent believers in the faith. This is a significant drop compared to
the rate of per cent and per cent, respectively.4 A decrease in inhumation is
also observable. The Roman Catholic Church approved cremation only in the mids as part of the Second Vatican Council. As traditionally devout Catholics, Spanish
Basques could not have engaged in these practices before that time. Indeed, the first
cremation in Bilbaos municipal cemetery did not take place until . In only three
years, however, the proportion of cremations rose to per cent (Barandiaran &
Manterola : ).
What is the destination of human ashes in the Basque Country? I situate this
question in the intersection of Bilbaos thriving football culture, a strong Catholic
political-cultural background but weakening practice, a growing preference for cremation, and a freedom of choice in ash disposal. It is in this matrix that Bilbainos, holding
an urn of ashes in their hands, pause and ask: what now?
A place for life: emotion, identity, and memory in San Mams

My middle-aged informant Txala (a pseudonym) faced this question as his sister, to

whom he was very close, was dying of cancer. The following account reveals why he
turned to San Mams as a final destination for her ashes:
One bad day she went to see the doctor with a grain in her armpit that had grown as big as a tangerine.
After various biopsies I knew I would be left alone without my sister. But she had a very strong
character, and she was fighting for four or five years like a champion. First they removed one of her

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breasts, and then the other one, with chemo and radio sessions that devastated her physically and
mentally. For two and a half years I drove her every Wednesday to a new oncology treatment in San
Sebastin. After six months, without any warning sign they said she had metastasis in the brain, the
sternum, and the bones. That day I knew that my sister was going to leave us.
She asked to be cremated, and that her ashes would be divided among her siblings. I told her
what I thought I would do with my part of her ashes: spread them over the playing field
in San Mams. That way Id visit her each time I go to the games in the Cathedral. Where else
would be best? Right next to our mothers house: San Mams had been our neighbourhood
all our lives. When we were children we used to sneak in and kick penalty shots, until the guards
threw us out. The bigger boys in my cuadrilla [age grade group of friends] even climbed over the
arch on top of the roof! Where else would be best for her? In San Mams, her home! I would visit
her often, and when the Lions [Athletic players] need help, she could offer her support for
them.

Txalas decision to bury his sister in the stadium took place in terms of the themes
Doris et al. () identify as defining a cemetery: home and the presence of the
body. As a symbol of self, family, and nurturing, San Mams allows the transference
of the sisters identity from the home to her grave-as-home, the playing field. Txala
considered three main factors for his decision: San Mams as an intimate place; the
maintenance of physical proximity for the purposes of being together; and the rituals importance for the team and, by extension, the community. Txala chose San
Mams because it had been a place for life, where communal and individual experiences of emotion, identity, and memory merge.
Stadiums like San Mams can be seen as ritual arenas (Fernandez : )
replete with signs and significances that engage the fans emotions. As they first look
at the field, their thoughts may go to aita, the father who first took them to San
Mams, and from whom they inherited their membership card. If the south wind
does not abate, this is ominous: Athletic plays better with the north wind. With
xirimiri, the ubiquitous drizzling rain of the Bay of Biscay, there will be a shower of
goals. Pre-game acts bring bad luck, except for the ritual deposition of a bouquet by
the bust of Pichichi, Athletics first player of sufficient calibre to enter the hall
of fame in the s. Fans smell the intimate odour of San Mams: wet grass mixed
with the ubiquitous smoke of Reig cigars. They look at the players, los leones or the
Lions: the clubs foundation myth revolves around the story of Saint Mammes, the
Christian child martyr cast before lions. This religious story recalls the miserable win
of the last game, which, as the coach put it, the team won in the ninety-first minute
with the help of the Virgin of Begoa. Sacred places, Chidester and Linenthal
remark, form a recursive series of metaphoric equivalences (: ): fans are
immersed in not just a place, but a landscape of emotions, relations, practices, and
meanings.
Upon entering the stadium, many fans report an overwhelming feeling of semper
maior, a mysticism that points to something always greater, always more, always
beyond. How many cosmological, legendary, religious, and socio-economic experiences reverberate in San Mams! As I entered and first saw the terraces and the field, a
fan recalls, I had to stop for a moment. There I was finally, tears pouring down my face.
The green field of chance, the uncertain outcomes, and the eternal desire for the goal
evoke nature, that vast domain of surprise, of terror, of marvel, of miracle, the
unknown, as distinguished from the known, or ... the infinite (Max Mller in
Durkheim : ). At the same time, the stadium is thick with collective memory. San
Mams is the place where
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Pichichi first set the scoreboard going, with a result of - against Barcelona [in ]; where the
mythic forward squad of Zarra, Venancio, Gainza, Iriondo and Panizo, perforated the nets of the
opponents again and again; the snow-covered field where Manchester United fell shortly before its
aeroplane accident in Munich; the pitch where Dino Zoff went through the greatest anxieties of his
career; the site where Bryan Robson scored the fastest goal in World Cup history; the goal post where
Rocky Liceranzu scored goal no. ,, and gave Athletic its eighth league title; where coach Bielsa
revolutionized our game so we can dream again. But San Mams is much more than this.5

The meanings of places unfold in stories, myths, rituals and in naming (Sheldrake
: ). Saint Mammes of Caesaria is a semi-legendary child martyr from the third
century, who was thrown to the lions, but tamed the animals as he preached to them.
San Mams stadium has a Tribune of Compassion and a Tribune of Capuchins. It was
built next to the Casa de la Misericordia (House of Mercy), once a convent of San
Mams, whose chapel holds an alleged relic of the saint. At important games, some fans
light seven candles as a prayer offering for the teams success. The Virgin of Begoa, too,
is often ritually asked to push the ball for Athletic. Soccer is memory and identity
consisting of individual stories and deeper narrative currents.
For a sports fan, some of the most important life-cycle rituals (birth, baptism,
confirmation, marriage, death) are enveloped by Athletic. Fans often claim that one is
born an Athleticzale (Athletic fan): se lleva en la sangre, it runs in the blood. Fathers
sign their unborn children up on the waiting list for club membership. Aunts bring the
first red-and-white pyjamas. On the first family photos, the crib will be populated with
Athletic objects and toys. The sacramental event of birth is surrounded by objects
deemed sacred and protective: a fan told me his crib was made of wooden seats his
construction worker father had brought home from San Mams. The greatest confirmation gift a teenager may hope for is an Athletic membership card. Wedding parties
in Bilbao often start and end with the Athletic Club anthem, and the stadium may be
reserved for wedding day photo shoots.
Fandom has two more rites of incorporation: your first time in San Mams and
acquiring club membership. Neither is absolutely necessary to be a fan, nor are they
always possible. They constitute, however, an ultimate inspiration. Anthropologists
have remarked the importance of first rites: a sports fans most memorable first is in
their stadium, whose memory they recall with a romantic gleam in their eyes. For fans
arriving from a distance, their first time in San Mams is often accompanied by the
catharsis of sense-making:
What really took my breath away and made me cry uncontrollably was the homage to Txopo [the
legendary goalkeeper Iribar]. My father would tell me marvellous things about him. He adored this
goalkeeper. When the Cathedral just kept thundering his name, thats when I understood everything,
and this time I was where I always wanted to be: in San Mams, the Cathedral of football (pers.comm.,
May ).

Locals are assisted by family members through this rite.The first time I was in San Mams,
a fan told me, I was a baby in my fathers arms. Taking someone to their first game will
always structure that relationship, and its importance becomes all the more acute in its
absence:As I first entered the stadium, another fan recalled,I thought of my dead father,
who raised me an Athletic fan, and who had never been in San Mams. By going to the
stadium with his dead father on his mind, this fan ritualistically fixed a broken universe:
the fact that his father never had afirst time, and that he was not with the son for hisfirst
time.
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The second rite of incorporation, hacerse socio, or becoming a club member, provides the , socios who maintain and govern the club through a system of representation, elections, and annual membership fees although recently many have
complained of their shrinking powers as the club has been forced, grudgingly, to follow
the increasing commercialization of football. Membership means having a season
ticket and owning a seat in San Mams. Membership is practically always full in Athletic
Club, and may be rarely obtained through vacancy. This turns its eventual realization
into a life event of sacrifice and desire:
I became an Athletic Club member in the s. They were very hard times after the war. My family
was poor, and my father dead. I was , and all I wanted was to become an Athletic Club member. My
mother couldnt afford the membership fee, but she told my brother and me that if we worked and
made our own money, we could spend it on club membership. We started to work all kinds of odd jobs
after school. After four years of working and saving every single centimo, we had the money. It was a
beautiful April day. As my brother and I entered the Athletic Club office to purchase our membership,
we were bursting with pride, and felt like the lords of the world! The office lady said this: Boys, why
dont you come back in September and buy your membership? The season is almost over, and if you
sign up in September, you can save the cost of the summer fees. My brother and I looked at each other.
We were very poor, but we had been waiting for this moment all our lives, and worked for four years.
We were not going to wait a day longer. We purchased our card. Later in September, Athletic Club
announced that membership was filled to the maximum. There were no openings for several years
(pers.comm., March ).

When there is no opening for membership, fans often acquire cards by inheriting them
from the dead. Even when too old or sick to attend games, they will usually lend their
cards but not cancel their membership. I once talked to a -year-old fan who had lived
in the south of Spain for twenty-five years, and hadnt gone to San Mams for that
entire time. He nevertheless kept and paid his membership. Ill be an Athletic member,
he said, until death do us part. And even beyond, as we will see.
A place between life and death: the years of the apocalypse

Being dead, Mara Ctedra writes about the mortuary beliefs and practices of the
Vaqueiros in the north of Spain, close to the Basque area, involves an apprenticeship ...
in which a new order of existence is learned (: ). For the Vaqueiros, death is a
process that starts before physical death and doesnt finish until long afterwards, a
period that is characterized not by the binary of dead or alive, but rather by a transitory
existence between life and death.
As liminal places, sport stadiums allow for a similar experience of oscillation
between life and death. Ninety minutes in the Cathedral, Bilbainos say, gives life, and
takes life away. While sports stadiums are normally associated with exuberance, lifecycle rituals, and positive experiences, death, too, is present. Football is replete with
metaphors of dying and resurrecting on the playing field: to do ones best is to leave
ones skin (dejarse la piel); a noble player will die on the field (morirse en el campo). A
most excruciating experience of fandom is the oscillation between metaphorical states
of life and death with the ebb and flow of the teams performance. The vertical,
up-and-down movements on the league table mirror fans visions of heaven (top
positions), purgatory (descending zone), and hell (descent to the second division).
Never had death and resurrection been as present in San Mams as in the seasons of
-. Bilbainos called these the years of the apocalypse as the team was constantly in
the relegation zone. Never had Athletic sunk to the second division before, and the fan
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community suffered intensely: I had nightmares. I would dream that we sunk to

segunda, and would wake up crying, my heart racing two hundred beats a minute, a
young woman told me. Another fan said he started to lose his hair as a result of anxiety:
The possibility of sinking to segunda had an effect on your work, your relationships,
your health, your sex life, everything. A middle-aged man told me, I remember the day
that my cardiovascular test came out. It said I had a heart murmur. I was convinced it
was because of the anxieties of that season.
First-division status came down to a final game in June , a must-win properly
called the Salvation Game. It became a dramatic allegory for the life and death of the
community: Depending on how the game was going to end, a fan told me, it could
have been the end. The end of what? Of everything, of the world, of life, everything! It
looked like the entire city was preparing for collective suicide.
Elderly Athletic fans were advised to skip games lest they should have a heart attack
in San Mams. It was during this year that the company charged with the medical
staffing of games set up resuscitating equipment in the stadium, as they anticipated that
fans would come despite risky exposure to heightened emotions. The following
informants accounts reveal how fans may closely associate life, death and team
performance:
I was so nervous in the morning before the game that I decided to take a walk. Just as I stepped out
of the house, I saw an old man pass out and collapse in the street. What a bad start to the day! I
thought, as we called the ambulance. Hope its not a premonition! (pers.comm., March ).

Another fan told me this about his possible death, eventual recovery and the performance of the team:
If I didnt get a heart attack, I was very close to it. I was in rather bad health. I had to go to dialysis
sessions and I was feeling weak. But I decided to go to San Mams. In spite of everything, I had to be
there at the Salvation Game. I remember the suffocating heat, people feeling miserable, and my nerves
on the edge. But we did it, we saved ourselves -. The next day I remember the conversation about
the game with my doctors, the nurses, and other dialysis patients. The doctor told me half-jokingly,
half-seriously that it was not good for me to go through all this anxiety in San Mams. I told him that
I could die, but Athletic is Athletic, and nothing in the world could keep me from going to the
Cathedral. And look, the next day, on June, I received a call from the Hospital of Cruces. They said
there was a possible donor and they wanted to do the pre-transplant compatibility exams. And the
following day, Wednesday, June, the second miracle happened within just a few hours. Ever since,
Athletic has had no problems on the classification table, and I lead a practically normal life (pers.
comm., March ).

This fan interpreted his healing as a reward for his readiness to sacrifice himself to a
larger communal cause: cheering the team to its salvation. What could have become a
site of death became a site of miracle as the teams performance became the allegorical
equivalence of the fans own life, possible death, and eventual resurrection.
The following account also reveals a blurred line between the symbolic death of the
team and the community, and the real death of the individual:
The father of my best friend had several health issues, which in two days became aggravated. He died
on the day of the Salvation Game. During the first half, my friend received a call: his father was dying.
He was devastated as these two disasters were happening at the same time, one much graver than the
other. And yet he stayed to cheer the team to its salvation, as his father would have wanted him to do.

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Death in the Cathedral 645

He died during the second half, just when his Athletic saved itself, his Athletic that he was ready to
accompany at the moment of its possible death (pers.comm., March ).

The son felt devastated for staying at the stadium when his father was dying at home.
He nevertheless followed the symbolic mandate of what he believed his father had
wanted: whether the team was going to save itself or die, it would be escorted by father
or by son.
Death and resurrection are present in the Cathedral in yet another way. There
are many dead people in San Mams, Bilbainos say, with reference to the fact that
fans often go to the stadium with the membership cards of deceased relatives,
without bothering to do the paperwork and change the name. Dead fans may effectively own seats. Through its evocative power, San Mams provides a space for the
dead to remain socially alive, active agents in the ongoing social world (cf. Mulkay in
Hallam, Hockey & Howarth : ). For the Salvation Game, San Mams
filled to its ,-seat capacity as it normally does, but there were more people than
this in the stadium. For each fan, it was also populated with a spirit world that raised
them in football. As I entered the stadium, a fan said, my first thought went to my
aita, my dead father:
I remember I changed seats with a friend, as she wanted to sit close to her brother. I didnt mind,
because my new seat was next to where my father used sit for forty years, until he died. I said fine, I
will live the game as though I was living it with him. As we were winning -, I appeared to be talking
to myself out loud, or to people around me but inside of me I was talking to Dad. It never happened
to me before. The game was finally over, and I cried shamelessly, and people around me cried also,
people I had known from many years of going to San Mams. And I looked at my fathers seat and I
saw him crying, too, with fear and happiness (pers.comm., March ).

Owing to its pervasive emotional and experiential significance in life, and the game
spheres allegorical transitions between life, death, and resurrection, San Mams
emerges before the community as a place for a good death.
A place for a good death: the communal relevance of ashes in
the stadium

Ideally, a man should die at the correct time, in the correct place, and in the correct
manner, Middleton writes (: ). There are, as anthropologists and sociologists
have shown (Durkheim ; Hart, Sainsbury & Short ; Middleton ), optimal
circumstances and manners of passing. Depending on the context, a good death
might be one which occurs in ripe old age, in ones hut, home, or bed, with family
and/or a religious practitioner around. One should die peacefully and with dignity,
without bodily discomfort or disturbance. A bad death, in contrast, includes cases
when the remains of the deceased person do not disperse properly, or where the
death occurs at the wrong time, in the wrong manner, and in the wrong place: for
instance, when death happens at a young age, outside of the home, in a hospital or
hospice, when hunting, in a feud or warfare, during childbirth, or through homicide
or suicide.
Mortuary practices, beliefs, and anxieties reflect notions of good death. In order to
explore the meanings and ramifications of good death for fans, let us turn back to my
informant Txala, whom I quoted earlier on how he decided to spread the ashes of his
dead sister in San Mams. His story continues as follows:
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646 Mariann Vaczi

Where else would be best for her? In San Mams, her home! I would visit her often, and when the
Lions need help, she could offer her support for them.
And thats what she did: she saved Athletic the first year we were going to go down to the second
division. She died on August . In September that tragic season started. Several games passed,
Athletic was doing terribly, and I just kept postponing the execution of my promise to my sister. At
first I didnt think there was a connection, but the season was coming to an end, and Athletic was one
point away from the relegation zone. It got to the point when there were only three games left: a home
game against Zaragoza, an away game against Deportivo, and a final home game against Barcelona.
There was no time left: if I didnt do it during the game against Zaragoza, I would lose the home game
opportunity, and the final one against Barcelona would be probably too late. Imagine if we went down
to the second division without fulfilling my promise to my sister!
I entered the stadium half an hour earlier to do it without calling attention to myself, and to talk
with the security guards. If you ask the Club, it will officially deny permission. I told myself: Txala, you
either do it now, or you will regret it for the rest of your life. And to carry this on my shoulders! I went
over to the guard, and the bad luck I had, he was dumber than a mad bird! He told me no, and that
I was crazy. I told him yes, I was crazy, and if he didnt let me do it, Id do it during the game, and he
and all his colleagues would be fired for letting me get onto the pitch. That scared him, and he called
his superior. This time I was lucky: the bosss son played football in the same youth league as my son,
and we knew each other by sight. He told me no problem, many people ask him the same thing, and
he finds this completely normal. He asked me if it could wait until the end of the game. I thought he
was fooling me around. But when the game was over he kept his word like a gentleman. He waved to
me, and opened the gate.
I stepped onto the sacred field of the Cathedral, and fulfilled my promise: I spread my sisters
ashes. We won not only that game, but also the following one, and even the last one against Barcelona.
Athletic was saved! I myself couldnt believe it, because it was practically impossible to save ourselves.
But there she was finally, my sister Maite, the gardener of San Mams, and she saved us. I have
absolutely no doubt about that. Little Maite saved us (pers.comm., September ).

Douglas () defines contamination as matter out of place. Txalas story shows

how he drew a causal relationship between his sisters ashes being out of place, outside
of the Cathedral, and the inglorious performance of the team. Unless he dispersed her
ashes, her death was not a good death, and her matter was contaminating. Txalas story
is full to the brim with echoes of religious tropes as death is conceptualized not as
destruction but as transition: the ritual shows a belief in the connection between death,
the place of the body, and the fate of the soul and the survivors.
The objective of the funerary rite, Durkheim argues, is to destroy the body so that
the soul that had inhabited it will be liberated to become a spirit (: ). Spirits are
biologically dead but socially alive hybrids (Hallam et al. : ), and events in need
of explanation are often attributed to their doings. The dead have to be given their due:
a neglected soul, Hertz writes, watches its relatives mourning sharply, and if they do
not properly fulfil their duties towards itself, if they do not actively prepare its release,
it becomes irritated and inflicts disease upon them (: -). The danger of
improper secondary rites is that the soul may turn into a spirit with a grudge. Txalas
act of ash dispersal is meant as a ritual act of magic: a particular means of operating on,
or influencing, occult powers, for the good of the congregation as a whole or some of
its members (Gluckman & Gluckman : ). Txala attributed misfortunes like a
losing streak to the malign mystical influences that result from the improper handling
of the dead, such as through the breach of a promise.
A particularity of spreading ashes on football fields, as opposed to, say, spreading
them in nature, results from the challenges of the circumstances. Part of the ritual is the
transgression the bereaved has to partake in for the sake of agood death: he or she faces
a breach of convention, criminalization, a wall of guards, a fence, an unflattering fifteen
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Death in the Cathedral 647

minutes of fame on national television, and a hefty fine. External challenges are not
foreign to funerary rites. Bloch explains that Merina men first dramatize the association
of women with sorrow, mourning, decomposition. They then ritually execute an
assault on women before returning the corpse to the familiar tomb. Life-giving entry
into the tomb ... is achieved by breaking through, vanquishing this world of women, of
sorrow, of death and division (Bloch : ). Similarly, spreading ashes over the
football field is a dramatic victory: the fan must break through and vanquish a line of
guards and social conventions in order to fulfil a life-giving obligation.
Because it believes in itself , Hertz writes, a healthy society cannot admit that an
individual who was part of its own substance, and on whom it has set its mark, shall be
lost forever. The last word must remain with life (: ). Spreading the ashes in a
stadium is partly motivated by a hope to assimilate in this way the qualities, force, and
energy of the deceased. This hope drives mortuary practices such as the ritual consumption of the deceased persons flesh, or the rubbing of ones body with the ashes of
the deceased, or swallowing them with a drink. The connection between death, fertility,
and re-vitalization is common to mortuary beliefs: the sacrifice of death may propitiate
the gift of children, good crops, favourable weather, wealth, strength or the gift of
goals and victories.
From ash to stardust: transformation, transcendence, and iconicity in
sport stadiums

In this moment, Aretxaga writes about a mother spreading the ashes of her ETA
militant son, the metaphor of death as seed, as fortifying nourishment of struggle,
becomes reality. Like the [Christian] communion, the symbolism of this action is
perceived as sacramental by the participants of the act (: ). One such ash
dispersal took place in April in a small town in Gipuzkoa province (Zulaika :
). As the militants partner released his ashes in the wind, the loudspeakers echoed
the emblematic Basque song Izarren hautsa, Stardust. It was the same song I heard in
December before the Basque derby between Athletic and Real Sociedad in Anoeta
stadium, Donosti-San Sebastin. Thirty-two thousand fans sang on the terraces:
One day, the stardust became life
Of that dust, unexpectedly, in time we were born
And thats how we live, continuously creating our fate
Without tiring; by working we go ahead
To this chain we are all bound strongly.

For the Basques, ash and dust have special symbolic relevance for what are believed to
be their invigorating, magical effects (Zulaika : -). Referenced by the same word
auts in the Basque language, ash and dust are the reduction of form, apt symbol[s] of
creative formlessness (Douglas : ). In Basque traditional culture, ashes were at
the centre of various circular communal or domestic arrangements (homes, neighbourhoods, church buildings), and they were used in folk rituals of curing. Football
fans are discovering a new circular communal arrangement for ashes: the stadium,
where the deceased may turn into life-giving force as they continue to participate in the
drama of life, death, and resurrection re-enacted in each game.
There are three factors that render sport stadiums particularly relevant sites for the
re-ritualization of death (Prothero : ). First, San Mams is a place of intense
emotional experience embedded in successive generations, family tradition, and
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648 Mariann Vaczi

collective identity. The fan community is anchored not by political power, ideology, or
class-consciousness but, as Bloch and Parry say of the ways of legitimizing social order,
by some of the deepest emotions, beliefs and fears of people (: ). The social order
that emerges in the stadium is legitimized by the intensity of emotion and the pervasiveness of the concern generated by the team across the city. It is an order based not on
the social structure but rather on the liminal (V. Turner ) quality of the stands,
which suspends social status in order to embrace a common desire.
Second, there are few places like stadiums where the social construction of emotion
(Bloch & Parry : ) reaches such a climax as the culmination of an intimate
tradition of sentimental education. The communal depths of fandom lie in the inculcation of sentimientos, feelings: I had no option not to follow Athletic, a fan told me.
You are born into it. Here everyone roots for this team. Fans want what their microand macro-communities want: their family, cuadrilla, and an extended imagined community of Athletic fans. When the bereaved next of kin takes the ashes to a sport
stadium with the thought that it was in that field that the deceased felt his or her most
exalted states of emotion, the unspoken fact is that such emotion was shared by the
survivors as well family members and the entire city. At the level of fantasy and desire,
the memory of those emotional states gives ground to the expectation that they will be
experienced again, that they will turn into memorial re-enactments of those former
experiences in which the deceased also took part.
The third dimension that renders sport stadiums like San Mams attractive for the
dispersal of ashes concerns the transformative power of ritual (V. Turner ; van
Gennep ), which allows fans to think a transition from alive to dead, and from dead
to alive. What the liminal matrix achieves is to include mutually exclusive sets of
relationships (boy/man, single/married, dead/alive), and allow a given actor the capacity to occupy them as non-exclusive, that is, to pass from one state to the other. Liminal
phenomena constitute a higher level of order than the non-liminal, because only they
condense components of two different states of the same matrix related by transformation (T. Turner : ). In the liminal realm of transformation, patterns of both
roles may be observed: While becoming transformed from boy to man , Terence
Turner writes, and commencing to play the various adult male roles entailed by the
latter status towards other actors, he may retain ... the boyish roles of son and brother
towards those to whom he originally related in those roles (: ). The transition
that concerns us here is between dead and alive, and their reversal sought by the
operations of liminal transformation: at the level of desire, the possibility of the
inversion of roles enables the dead fan to remain socially alive for the community. This
is conceivable only in a higher-level liminal field that goes beyond binary oppositions.
Essential to van Genneps view of the rites of passage is that ritual transitions are
iconic expressions of social ones: the efficacy of the ritual consists in the fact that
symbolic passages parallel real ones. Sports are singularly attuned to provide the
iconicity needed for the mortuary transitions of death and resurrection: the many
metaphorical deaths and resurrections of competition allow fans to project the same
transformative power on the ashes of the deceased. We must also note the iconicity of
ashes as the pure, immaterial product of transformation divorced from the polluting
qualities of the corpse. The iconicity of death as corpse calls for a tomb in a cemetery
and requires rituals of purification. The iconicity of death in terms of ashes allows
ethereal and formless remains to be cast into a transcendent state. By their blowing in
the wind, ashes provide the iconicity for the operations of ritual transcendence.
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Death in the Cathedral 649

Owing to their embarrassment, it is not easy to get fans to discuss ash dispersals.
These rituals are still what Petersson, following Julia Kristeva, would call an abject
practice: they imply the disturbance of traditional symbolic systems and orders of
death practices (: ). Venturing into unsanctioned mortuary rituals, especially
when traditional modes of burial dont compromise commitment or dilute fervour
for the team, is not without predicament. As the boundaries between the sacred and
the profane blur, and without the safe settings of religion and science, ash-dispersing
fans remain vulnerable to potential disjunctions of this new deathscape: of what they
think of death in sports stadiums, and what actually may happen. What if the cremation process results, as it often does, in a mixture of ashes with other deceased?
What if Uncle Joes ashes end up in a lawnmower the next day? How to reconcile the
sacramental event of death with the vulgar market-orientatedness of sports? If
human ashes are used as magic in a competitive field to affect the outcome of the
game, should we expect their maliciously intended, polluting use by rival fans? Just as
my informant Txala carried over some safe cultural and religious meanings to his
ritual to avoid disjunctions, it remains to be seen how ash dispersals potentially mix
with traditional rituals and beliefs (e.g. funeral masses, wakes).
Anthropologists have argued that a main aspect of contemporary Western burial
practices has been a shift from religious-institutional settings to secular-private ones
(Clayden & Dixon ; Prendergast et al. ; Walter ) governed by a
postmodern view that believes in leaving it up to the individual to do it their way
(Walter : ). Research highlights the bereaved individuals increasing, even total
control of the material and symbolic placement of the remains (Kellaher & Worpole
: ). Fan burials in stadiums, however, pose a challenge to these tendencies,
placing the practice back in a social system of symbolic obligations and taboos. As
Cannell argues of family genealogy, ash dispersals in stadiums, too, put aside the myth
that the modern self floats free of obligations to others, or indeed, of the past (:
) or, indeed, of the future. Instead of floating free, the ash-dispersing fan acts
upon binding past experiences, for the future of the team and the community, and
against social mandates that still prohibit ashes on playing fields.
Ash dispersals in sport stadiums reveal the belief that the dead have more potential
than one might expect (Cannell : ): by creating new links with the living, they
come back to social life as fans, and continue to be revitalizing agents for the community. What qualifies stadiums mortuary practices is that they are motivated by a belief
in the acts significance not just for the individual or his or her family, but the entire fan
community. Continuing bonds (Klass, Silverman & Nickman ) thus include not
only private ones between the deceased and the surviving family members, but also the
bonds with tens of thousands of fans in an institutional setting. While ash dispersal in
stadiums remains a private decision, we see a real concern that ashes remain on the
public field, where, through the evocative power of place, experience, and emotion, the
deceased remain socially alive for the community. Ash dispersals in stadiums thus
respond to the call by Klass () to seek experiential examples of the social and
communal nature of continuing bonds, and to the anticipation by Prendergast et al.
that a more individualized approach to death and dying is itself likely to take on more
formal and indeed collectively shared qualities over the course of time (: ).
Stadiums imply a new solution when churchyards and cemeteries are discarded: a
collective-institutional site on the basis of their pivotal social and emotional relevance.
Clubs are increasingly aware that they cannot but face fans desire to redefine the
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650 Mariann Vaczi

meaning of following their club a muerte, to the death unconditionally, until the last
day and beyond.
NOTES
1
http://www.canalathletic.com/noticias/--/nuevo-mames-contara-espacio-.html (accessed
July ).
2
As note .
3
http://blogs.periodistadigital.com/deportes.php////ayuntamiento-bilbao-cenizas-sanmames-
(accessed July ).
4
http://www.elcorreo.com/vizcaya//mas-actualidad/sociedad/solo-juventud-euskadi-declara
-.html (accessed July ).
5
http://www.naiz.info/es/blogs/marakanatxikia/posts/la-mudanza-esta-al-caer-pero-los-recuerdos
-quedaran-para-siempre (accessed July ).
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La mort dans la Cathdrale : pratiques mortuaires dans les stades sportifs

Rsum
Le prsent article discute de la pratique mortuaire, rcemment apparue, qui consiste crer des
columbariums dans les stades et disperser subrepticement les cendres des dfunts sur les terrains de
sport. En se concentrant sur une communaut de supporters au Pays basque espagnol, lauteure explore du
point de vue ethnographique les croyances, identifications et expriences par lesquelles ceux-ci envisagent
sinsrer dans un stade de football aprs leur mort. Contrairement lide que la mobilit des cendres est
le rsultat dun choix individuel de plus en plus frquent et dune perte dintrt pour lespace et le lieu,
leur dispersion dans un stade montre que, mme si lacte est une dcision individuelle, la question du lieu
demeure trs importante, tout comme le sont les consquences de lacte pour la communaut. Si les stades
deviennent des lieux de dernier repos, cest justement en raison de leur rle social, communautaire et
motionnel central. En rsum, lauteure avance que les pratiques mortuaires individualises prennent des
formes collectives.

Mariann Vaczi (University of Nevada, Reno) is a cultural anthropologist focusing on the social, cultural, and
political dimensions of sports, especially soccer. Her geographical locus is the Basque Country and Spain. Her
ethnographic monograph Soccer, culture and society in Spain: an ethnography of Basque fandom is forthcoming from Routledge.

University of Nevada, Reno, Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, Reno /, Reno, Nevada
-, USA. mariannvaczi@hotmail.com

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , -

Royal Anthropological Institute