Success may be the only way we have to get away from fear, even if we never manage to leave it behind completely.. It should not be wrong, joy makes sense when it serves to alleviate pain. Four years of indifference always weigh when only winning is worth. That Barcelona of Xavi Hernández who found a good moment to proclaim himself champion against the dying Espanyol, discovered in football a refuge where he could rebuild his soul. This fresh and committed team, freed from the old jaws of the ego and oblivious to the ins and outs of the foremen, can look ahead without having to answer to the past.. And claim a title in which he has believed like no one else. He celebrated the title with a sardana in the central circle, and the radicals stormed the field without anyone being able to control them. The blows of an overwhelmed police followed one another while the Barça players ran away in a surreal scene. Soccer can be very depressing.

Barça needed to win in that hollow in Cornellà where there is no longer room for regrets, but rather for revolt. Before the break, and thanks to the torment to which Óscar Gil was dragged before the adolescent voracity of Balde -Lewandowski's assistant in the 0-1, author of the 0-2-, the Barça team had already closed the night. The Pole put his foot instead of his knee in the 0-3 draw, showing that age does not crack the trade (there are already 31 goals this season, 21 in the League), and the Espanyol fans were fed up. In the 40th minute, the blue and white fans decided to continue singing against the leadership of the Chinese toymaker Chen Yansheng while many left. Not the radicals, who waited until the end to take everything with them.

The coach Luis García, who was offered a dismembered project, and whose approach helped a Barcelona that could dance barefoot on the embers, cannot do it. The three midfielders arranged by Espanyol (Darder, Melamed and Denis), always in numerical but also physical inferiority, were swallowed up by Pedri, De Jong, Gavi and Busquets. The Barça captain should never have imagined such placidity.

Braithwaite, who did everything in slow motion until he was injured, examined Ter Stegen's concentration of iron, only surpassed by a Vaseline from Puado and a bit at the wrong time from Joselu. But this Espanyol has few arguments, who only fought for their dignity at sunset and when everything was already lost. Koundé reinforced that feeling after catching with his head, and after a caress from De Jong, his first goal as a Barça player.

Espanyol radicals invade the field. LLUIS GENE AFP

Bret Easton Ellis, who has written like nobody else about the sleaze of the human being, but also about the condemnation of redemption, used in American Psycho that of «the past is not real; it's just a dream”. Only the Barcelona players can understand it that way, champions four days from the end. And emancipated from the penalties in a Cornellà from which they had to run. Their heaven is elsewhere.