Viva Espana as El Clasico rivals join forces

Starting on Wednesday, Jaime Castaneda, a tapas bar manager, says he and Barca fans will be united in their support of their national side.

Jaime Castaneda is the manager of Sevilles, a tapas bar in Dubai which also serves as a meeting place for Barcelona fans.

It has been a bittersweet year for Jaime Castaneda, the manager of the Sevilles tapas bar at Wafi on Oud Metha Road. Since January, Mr Castaneda, 27, born in Madrid, has been running a place that also serves as the meeting place for the Barcelona fan club in the UAE. So Mr Castaneda, a Real Madrid fan, has had to watch as his club's chief rivals won La Liga for a second consecutive year and defeated Madrid in both their domestic meetings, a fixture known as El Clasico.

Starting on Wednesday, however, he says he and Barca fans will be united in their support of their national side. "I can't say anything because Barca in the last years are winning everything so I just keep quiet," Mr Castaneda says. "Basically, eight players of the national team are from Barcelona, the base of our football comes from Barcelona, and they won all the trophies." Elisa Labori, the president of the Barca fan club, is taking great joy in that fact. "We say it is Barca who is playing, not Spain," Ms Labori, 47, who moved from Barcelona 15 years ago, laughs. But she says she will be wearing her Spanish national team shirt during the World Cup.

Spain, which have never won the World Cup, enter this tournament ranked among the favourites. On Tuesday night, they thrashed Poland 6-0 in a warm-up match. The team are ranked second in the world by Fifa, the sport's governing body, and Mr Castaneda believes that their victory in the 2008 European Championship has given them the confidence they lacked in the past. "I think that for the first time we believe in ourselves," he says. "Once we won the Euro Cup, this is something we missed. We were really good in the past but we never won, we never had that charisma that Italy and England have because they already are champions.

"I think it is now or never. This is our chance." Mr Castaneda is also hoping for a long campaign for Spain, as he is expecting his bar to be particularly crowded for the Spanish matches. There are more than 1,000 Spaniards living in the country, the majority of them young professionals, according to the embassy in Abu Dhabi. Mr Castaneda's friend, Nacho Parea, 29, from Vigo in the northwest of Spain, says he is not confident the team will be crowned champions. Mr Parea, who partied late into the night in Madrid in 2008 after Spain's victory in the European Championship, says he cannot begin to imagine what he will do should Spain win their first World Cup.