Barcelona supporters get a triumph for their arch

The arch, an elegant redbrick structure near the city's main park, was built in 1888 to honour a historic Catalan victory that had never actually happened. It towered over a crowd consisting mainly of teenagers with faces painted in their team's colours, the occasional granny in a Barça scarf and strolling beer sellers refreshing the spectators that had gathered expectantly long before kick-off.

Jordi, 65, was one of them. He had been in London in 1992, when Barcelona lifted their first European Cup. "Wembley is holy ground to us. That's where it all started. We used to be a club that was always one step behind the greats. Now, we're the best team in the world." Barça were one match away from securing their fourth title, taking them level with Bayern Munich and Ajax. This was history in the making. A fact not lost on Jordi's nervously chain-smoking friend Andrés, who declared himself a fanatical culé , Ronaldo."

The subject of Madrid is never far from the surface, even after having vanquished their eternal rivals in the bad-tempered series of Clásicos. As the crowds swelled the atmosphere remained festive. Among the new chants around the plaza was "Why, why, why …?" dedicated to José Mourinho as an ironic riposte to his dark insinuation after his team's 0-2 defeat at the Bernabéu: "Why does Barça always win?" To Barça fans the answer is as clear as the slogan chosen by Barça's shirtmakers to celebrate victory in La Liga: Barça is "a club with big values and big balls".

In the rest of Spain, the question of Barça's entitlement to being considered the best club in the world wasn't under discussion. Even the rabidly madridista declared in their editorial that the time had come for Barça to "crown a golden age". Writing in the same paper, the Spanish prime minister, José Zapatero – a lifelong Barça fan – gushed that the final would be "a celebration of beauty between two teams with a lot of personality, two individual styles and two different ways of understanding the world". On TVE, Spain's national television channel, the buildup to the final was under way, with the Liverpool keeper Pepe Reina as a "surprise pundit" declaring that the game was "Barça's for the taking".

In Barcelona, the giant screen showing the final had been moved this year because the city's central Plaça Catalunya had been occupied by disaffected youth taking part in Spain's other national sport: protesting. But as the game kicked off Barça fans insisted that victory celebrations would take place in the traditional spot at the top of Las Ramblas, despite recent tensions between the protesters and the local police. "If we win it again, the whole city's going to go absolutely mental," said Susana, 25, her voice already strained by the emotion.