ABSTRACT
In 2010, a highlight of Spanish nation-building during the South African soccer World Cup was an Adidas commercial promoting the Spanish national team jersey. The commercial was titled Nace de dentro, ‘It is born within’. It features two Basque players and an Asturian as they stand with naked upper bodies, handsome, muscular and sweaty. The players start stripping their own skin digitally, from under which emerges the national symbol of Spain, and the colours red and yellow: the Spanish national team jersey. Against the backdrop of slow motion soccer field images and dramatic music, a voiceover talks: ‘This jersey is history. It is everything that we suffer for, that we fight for, that we feel and live for. That which unites us is born within.’ Rarely is the embodiment of a nation rendered so literally: the athlete’s body is used as a primordial metonym for a united Spain where all are Spanish ‘under their skin’, in essence, while they may be Basque, Asturian, Catalan on the surface.
