It was a surprise that Sanz then failed to win the presidential elections, but rival Florentino Perez promised galactico recruits. Sanz’s son, Fernando, played for Real Madrid’s first team, his nephew Michel Salgado too.

“I know what Madrid meant to you when you were a seven-year-old selling bottles of water at the Bernabeu with your grandmother,” wrote Salgado, “and when you brought back the two Champions League titles. No Madridista will ever forget you.”

It’s very sad, but Spain is still reeling from the virus and Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez maintains that the worst is yet to come. He sought to extend the state of emergency for another 15 days to mid-April and the idea of competitive sport in front of spectators any time soon is wishful thinking. On Monday, La Liga announced the indefinite suspension of all competitions in Spain, with football off until it can be resumed without health risks.

With more than 33,000 confirmed as infected with the virus and nearly 2,200 dead, it’s inevitable that it will touch all areas of the population. Nearly 500 died on Sunday alone. China’s best known footballer, Wu Lei, who has been at Espanyol in Barcelona for over a year, tested positive though he only has mild symptoms.

To try to slow the virus with the steepest trajectory of spread of any country, Spain has been in lockdown. People must stay indoors and can leave home only to buy food, visit the pharmacy or buy a newspaper or tobacco. You must carry ID at all times and receipts to prove that you’re going to buy food or to the pharmacy. Everything else is closed.

You cannot go out for a run or a walk, you cannot mix in communal areas with neighbours. Spain lives its life outdoors, but for now the beaches, parks and paseos are out of bounds.

Police have a high presence and, when they’re not playing the guitar to cheer locals in Mallorcan villages, they’re enforcing the orders and issuing fines.

Roads are quiet, public transport runs a skeleton service for key workers, neighbours talk across balconies and arrange meet-ups online. A DJ friend invited 100 people to an online disco which started at 9pm last Friday night – early for Spain. The music buffered a little but people are reconnecting with those they’d been meaning to speak to.

At 8pm each night, everyone claps and cheers the medical staff putting themselves at risk as they try to help the infected. Images of patients lying on a floor on an overcrowded hospital in Leganes, south of Madrid, are horrendous. A giant Madrid conference hall has been set up as a makeshift hospital in an image eerily to the “Spanish flu” epidemic of 100 years ago.

Flashes of humour still persist. A member of a veterans’ football team I played with (they’d played every Saturday, 52 weeks a year, for 31 years and Johan Cruyff turned out for them) messaged on WhatsApp: “They said a mask and gloves were enough to go to the grocery store. They lied, everybody else had clothes on.”

An economic package has been introduced to compensate business and individuals, but almost everyone will lose out. Spain was hit harder than almost every country by the 2008 global recession and took a long time to climb out of it.

Hundreds of thousands of young educated Spaniards still live and work in the wealthier economies of north Europe. The Spanish government paid for their education, the economies of the UK or Germany benefit from them. Spain does benefit from tourism from northern European sun seekers, though the images of British tourists refusing to stay inside their Benidorm hotels was ridiculed.

Businesses are closing. My wife runs a small enterprise designing and selling kids’ clothes for a living. The orders have stopped. She gives the materials she spent months designing, sourcing, printing and paying for to a neighbour. She, in turn makes them into face masks. Beautiful face masks.

The neighbour sells them for a couple of euros and donates every penny to charity. The lady, who lost her son when he was 10, said it’s the first time she’s felt alive since his passing and fully able to provide a service people need. Out of darkness, a shred of light.