Spain and Argentina will meet in the World Cup final on Sunday, and in Ireland the match is already shaping the plans of a visible Spanish community that has turned Dublin music venues into gathering points. For Gon Massey, who arrived in Ireland nine-and-a-half years ago to busk on the streets, the final lands in a place where Spanish voices now feel far more common than they once did.
Massey and Anxo Silveira, who formed Baliza three years ago, have ridden that shift. The duo sold 800 tickets in 24 hours for a show at the Dtwo club before Spain beat France 2-0 in last Tuesday’s semi-final, and Baliza featured on Spanish television last week. Massey said they now have a strong following from the Spanish community in Ireland, while also describing the crowd surge as something that did not exist when he first came to the country.
That change sits alongside a bigger one. The permanent Spanish population in Ireland rose from 6,794 in the 2011 census to 17,953 in 2022, a jump that helps explain why Spanish-linked events are drawing such attention in Dublin. Massey said he sold out 10 nights in Whelan’s over the last year, and the pair are now planning to watch the final in Dtwo before heading on to the Molly Malone pub if Spain win.
The football comes wrapped in older history as well. A replica of Christopher Columbus’s flagship, the Noa Santa Maria, is berthed at Fiddle Case Pier in Drogheda, Co Louth, after arriving on Thursday and staying until July 26th. It is the first time a Spanish galleon has arrived in Irish waters since three were shipwrecked off the coast in 1588, when 1,100 men drowned off Streedagh Beach, Co Sligo, and Spain’s intervention during the Nine Years’ War ended at the Battle of Kinsale in Cork in 1601-1602. The Galeón Andalucía is making its way clockwise around the west coast, while Pedro Sánchez studied English in Ireland in the 1990s and Xabi Alonso won the World Cup with Spain in 2010 after spending a summer in Co Meath learning English.
For Massey, the surprise is not that the community is here now, but how quickly it has become impossible to miss. He said some people came for work, others for the life Ireland offers, and that the mix has built something durable around music, football and the final now waiting on Sunday. If Spain win, the celebration he described will not be confined to one venue for long.
