It was something never seen before. More than a million people filled both banks of the Bilbao estuary to celebrate the Cup title with the barge that crossed its waters, surrounded by more than a hundred boats of all types. It was the total party, just like those that Patxo Unzueta recounted four decades ago in the pages of EL PAÍS. Bilbao and Bizkaia turned to Athletic, but dozens of coaches also arrived from Vitoria and more than a dozen from Madrid. All the red and white fans wanted to celebrate a title that lasted 40 years.
At the scheduled time, after four in the afternoon, the directors and employees of the club began to enter the barge, docked at the pontoon of the centenary Abra Maritime Club. The sports director, Mikel González, kissed the floor of the boat, well stocked with food and drink. Shortly after, the players entered, all of them dressed in a red and white striped shirt, in memory of the one worn by the heroes of 1984. One of them, Jon Aspiazu, Ernesto Valverde's second coach, was wearing the original, the same one he wore 40 years ago, as a member of the squad.
A few meters away, another boat gathered the relatives of the soccer players and another the 1984 champions. Andoni Zubizarreta, Manolo Sarabia, Txetxu Gallego, Dani, Liceranzu, Bolaños and other veterans who at the time traveled on the barge, repeated the journey.
From the first moment, when the barge headed into the estuary between Getxo and Portugalete, under the Hanging Bridge, Iker Muniain, the captain, took command of the ship, and monopolized the microphone from which he directed his companions, who greeted incredulously with what they were seeing to port and starboard. The trip continued between Lamiako and Sestao. To the right, thousands of fans dressed in Athletic shirts greeted. On the left, in what were the Vizcaya Blast Furnaces, a hundred workers with their helmets, who work at the Sestao Compact Steel Plant, some of them on a crane, like those who appear in the 1983 photographs.
As we passed through the Murueta shipyard, the sirens of the Arteaga sounded, a ship being built at its docks, decked out in red and white. Then Erandio arrived on one side and Barakaldo on the other, with packed balconies and people on the roofs. Behind the barge, in which the players continued with the party, displaying the cup on one side and the other, traveled dozens of boats.
In one of them, the Barcelona player Iñigo Martínez, wearing an ikurriña and a black hat, aboard his yacht usually anchored in the Getxo Marina. He traveled to Bilbao early after returning from Paris, where his team played PSG.
Stop in San Mamés
As the procession approached Bilbao, the singing on the banks grew louder. And also on the barge, this time dedicated to the journalists, when they approached the side of their boat: “Where is the ibizaneta, where is the ibizaneta?”, in relation to the information about the players' vacations in Ibiza, or “and what about the cigar?”, on a photograph of Iker Muniain with one in his hands. There was no free space, except in the fenced places where, as a precaution, the entry of spectators was prohibited. In Lutxana, the Varkan Marmara, a Turkish gas carrier, also waved its siren.
Then came the entry into Bilbao through Zorrozaurre, and the barge stopped to throw flower petals at the height of San Mamés, in memory of the deceased partners. Afterwards, the barge crossed under the Euskalkduna bridge, the Deusto bridge, the Padre Arrupe footbridge, the so-called Black Pope, a great Athletic supporter, the Salve bridge and finally the Calatrava bridge, before disembarking at the City Hall, where a crew. There the players greeted from the balcony. “For those who are here, for those who have left, for those who played for Athletic and didn't make it, this goes for everyone,” summarized Iñaki Williams.