What am I doing here, travel diary, day 25: there is no choice but to ask for forgiveness; in Qatar there are dogs, there are clouds and it even rains!

This time I have to retract. In duplicate. Because, nobility obliges, you don’t have to hide the reality. If we do it right, we move forward. If we make a mistake, we admit it and start over. This is the only way to evolve. At least, as Guillermo Nimo would say, that’s how I see it…

Errata I: Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen and ladies, I have to tell you there are dogs in Qatar. I haven’t seen them yet, but I have to believe our comrade Adrián Maladesky, one of Clarín’s special envoys, who on Tuesday before entering the Ciudad de la Educación stadium met not one dog, but fifty. We were few and…

Stray dogs? No, not there. Were police dogs who were part of the security operation to control possible excesses between the fans of Spain and those of Morocco -they were the vast majority in the Ciudad de la Educación stadium and they left, obviously, jubilant-. It was new. Except for the camels we saw on the opening match day at Al Bayt – we also saw ducks and swans in a pond there – and except for the cats who are always around, we had never seen dogs working to ensure peace in stadiums.

Luckily nothing happened – it didn’t even happen in Spain – but the pichichos were there, at the foot of the canyon, and since the truth never fails, here’s my my bad. Of course, I ask you to agree with me: 25 days had gone by here and we hadn’t seen any yet. It was weird, huh.

Errata II: I must tell you that there are clouds in Qatar. It’s official. Confirmed. It seems like a joke because in the previous travel diary I spoke of the absence of clouds and dogs when I spoke of the striking and worrying absence of European fans. But this Wednesday the clouds appeared. As if to fight me, of course.

So you don’t feel like a scammer of words, I present the evidence. Message from Gary Lineker, the goalscorer of the World Cup in Mexico 86, on his Twitter account. “First day without football, first day without clouds”he wrote in English to, without knowing it, serve as an alibi.

The absurd thing is that Lineker’s photo shows a blue sky and a gigantic cloud looming over the horizon of one of the many heavenly and sumptuous places around here -probably a beach in the La Perla area-. But that was just the beginning of a rare afternoon in and around Doha.

The sky clouded over violently and a strong wind started blowing which forced us to close the windows because all the doors started opening and closing as if we were in a haunted house. It was a tense moment because with our colleagues we thought we were living in an historic moment. Rain in Qatar.

And, even if you don’t believe it, we live it. It rained in Qatar. It had only been three minutes. A few drops and she started to clear up.

What seems unique to us ignorant foreigners is actually not. Because between December and March is the rainy season here in that part of the Middle East. It doesn’t rain much, it’s only a handful of days and a handful of millimetres. There are less than 10 days a year when this phenomenon occurs. And we were here to tell about it.

What does rain taste like? Although it is a health risk considering the problem of climate change, pollution and all that entails, we have done truth journalism and tasted a few drops of it. As Carlitos Balá would say: salty.

The other question: where do people go when it rains in qatar? Nowhere, it was just 180 seconds of incessant dripping until the sky regained its composure and the wind began to blow away all those clouds that had become temporary tenants of the firmament. Everything remained the same. The clothes didn’t even get wet.

Now we already know that there are dogs and that there are clouds. and now let’s verify that it’s actually raining too. The last question: Will pilots and umbrellas be sold here? Eye, huh. Today I am very smart.

Doha, Qatar. Special delivery.