BARCELONA, Spain (CNN) – For many fans here in Barcelona, the celebration started after the first goal, by Samuel Eto’o, in the Champions League final against Manchester United. Others, older and having seen more disappointments from their beloved Barcelona over the years, were more cautious. They didn’t become jubilant until Messi scored the second goal in the second half.

Barcelona fans celebrate in the streets of the Spanish city.

By that time, from our position with the thousands of Barca fans watching the game on a big screen in the old port area, it was sheer pandemonium – a field of red and blue Barcelona stripes, sparklers and fireworks, thousands of well lubricated (it wasn’t the local coffee, I don’t think) fans singing the Barca hymn.

Doing one liveshot after another for CNN, I could barely hear the questions from colleagues in the studios. But we were able to transmit the sheer joy of the historic moment – Barcelona getting its third trophy this year - the Spanish league and the Spanish King’s Cup and finally the sweetest of all, the Champions League.

And all of it for a first-year coach, Josep “Pep” Guardiola, just 38, a former Barca player whom one leading Barcelona newspaper on Thursday said was “touching heaven.”

After the game we headed toward the central Plaza de Catalunya, along with almost every other man, woman, child and house pet in town. Others came in from across the region of Catalunya, some six million people in northeast Spain who consider this team part of their identity.

They celebrated on foot and in cars. And on top of cars and hanging out of cars, and on top of fountains, and waving banners and singing the Barca hymn.

Until about 3 am local time, it looked like the happy cops weren’t even trying. Although over the course of the night, we learned there were more than 100 arrests for various disturbances and more than a hundred injured.

As we drove back to the hotel after 4 am, having sent our final TV story by broadband, we saw various trash containers burning, a strange way to celebrate such a momentous victory.

On Thursday, we are at the fabled Camp Nou stadium. The team arrives from Rome around 6 pm local time, then boards open air buses for a three-hour victory lap around central Barcelona, finally due to arrive at the stadium which will be filled. Hundreds of thousands of people expected to continue the party across Barcelona for a second straight day.

At the stadium, there’ll be a presentation of the players and the cup, and the ceremony will be sure to include, yes, the Barca hymn. It’s a catchy tune, and I might just learn it by the time we’re finished here.

MADRID, Spain – It's five years since I rushed to Atocha station in central Madrid, near my home, following news of explosions on trains on March 11, 2004. There were confusing, mixed reports at first - but it was clear almost immediately that this was a terrorist attack and of tragic proportions.

Women pictured with flowers at Atocha station on the fifth anniversary of the Madrid terror attacks.

We now know, from court documents, that Islamic terrorists, using cell-phone timers as detonators, exploded 10 bombs on four trains at three stations. It all happened in the space of just three minutes, starting at 7:37am.

The terrorists had boarded the commuter line at Alcala de Henares east of Madrid, left the bombs in sports bags and backpacks aboard the trains, then got off at various stations. Soon after, the blasts ripped apart the trains.

We started this week by riding the ill-fated commuter line from the eastern university town of Alcala de Henares at 7 a.m., the time and place the terrorists boarded. We rode past each point where the bombs went off, including the open tracks by Tellez Street, just before the Atocha station, where the gaping holes in one train became an enduring image of the day.

Passengers on the train we met this week remember the fifth anniversary but say they must ride the trains from their outlying homes to get to work or school in an efficient manner, and that they want to carry on as normally as possible. The train company says a million commuters ride trains on weekdays in Madrid, a quarter of them in the rail corridor that was attacked.

The fifth anniversary memorials had a distinctly subdued tone this year, without Spain's King Juan Carlos I or Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in attendance.
Pilar Manjon, who lost a son aboard the train, is president of the main train bomb victims association. She told Spain's largest newspaper, El Pais, in an interview published on the anniversary, that some victims consider the lower level of officials at the memorial events this year as a slight.

We caught up with her on Wednesday at a memorial at Atocha station. She told us that her victims group had contacted the government to try to coordinate a memorial. After getting no response, she said, they joined Spain's two main trade unions for a brief ceremony outside Atocha station at 10am local time. There were flowers and brief comments.

A senior government official told me on the eve of the anniversary that the government had been trying to move forward, not asking the king nor the prime minister to attend the memorial ceremonies every year. It decided the fifth anniversary would be a proper time to make the change, even while offering full support and respect for victims.

The issue of how to observe the memorials in Spain is clearly present this year, and there is not full agreement on how to proceed.

At noon local time, in the bomb victim memorial hall at Atocha station, a cabinet member and Madrid's mayor led a moment of silence and laid a wreath for those who died. There were other smaller memorials at stations down the line.

That morning five years ago and the ensuing days are still very much in my mind. My son's schoolteacher at the time knew someone who died. My son's babysitter at the time knew someone who was injured. I just recently learned that my son's current schoolteacher also knows someone who was injured.

That is a common experience for many who live in Madrid. It's a combination of remembering, and going forward.

MADRID, Spain - Madrid had three election night parties downtown on Tuesday for Americans and their Spanish friends. Each one told part of the story of the U.S. elections, but by dropping in on all three, the picture of Barack Obama’s historic victory became clear.

Democrat supporters celebrate in Madrid's Circulo de Bellas Artes.

The Republicans started earliest, so I started there. A spirited group but probably no more than 70 people, in a basement meeting room at the Hard Rock Café Madrid.

Around 10 pm in Madrid, before the first polls closed, Spain for McCain chairman Edward Ruf thanked the group for “celebrating democracy,” encouraged them with what he said were last-minute polling numbers that showed McCain very competitive in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina and Missouri, and concluded that “no matter what happens tonight,” Americans were privileged to vote and have the will of the people respected.

Just a short walk down Madrid’s main boulevard, the U.S. Embassy’s bipartisan party was getting underway, with several hundred people already on hand and more coming. I talked with U.S. Ambassador Eduardo Aguirre, who said he’d have to be up early Wednesday to try to explain to the Spanish media what the elections results meant.

A Bush administration appointee, he told me he’d be leaving his post next January 20, the inauguration day for the new president in Washington. That will leave the U.S. Embassy here led by the deputy chief of the mission, a not-uncommon situation, until President Obama appoints his own Ambassador to Spain.

The crowd included a cabinet minister and another ranking official from Spain’s ruling Socialist Party, which clearly hopes Spain’s relations with President Obama will be much warmer than the cool bilateral stance with President Bush.

Then it was another short walk to the Democrats. Even as the polls remained open on the other side of the Atlantic, the optimism and enthusiasm over an expected Obama victory was palpable in Madrid. This party, far larger than the other two combined, had more than a thousand people packed into standing-room ornate salons at Madrid’s Fine Arts Circle building (Circulo de Bellas Artes). It was so crowded, and yes, chaotic, that several hundred people stood in line, in the chilly night, for a few hours just to get in, even if they had purchased advance tickets for 10 euros ($12.50). Tickets at the door cost double that.

Around midnight, a woman on the main stage belted out a soulful version of “The Star Spangled Banner,” and the boisterous crowd quieted, some placing their hands over their hearts. Surprisingly, a man who looked like a near double for the real Obama made his way through the crowd, several people later told me, but I didn’t see him. But standing next to me for a short while was a woman from Wisconsin who was dressed as Gov. Sarah Palin.

The U.S. Embassy says at least 100,000 Americans live in Spain. The two political parties in Spain held numerous voter registration drives in recent months, at college campuses and other locations where Americans gather, but neither party here gave an estimate on how many Americans voted from Spain.

At the Democratic party, a thunderous cheer went up when the early results appeared on the big screen -– which was showing CNN - that Obama was doing well in Indiana. It was the first of many big cheers for the Democrats at a party that continued almost until dawn in Madrid.

MADRID, Spain – The Prime Minister walked right past our CNN crew at Socialist Party headquarters on his way to give a victory speech to loyalists cramming the street after Spain’s elections.

Spain's Prime Minister celebrates with a thumbs-up after his victory.

I’ve been up close before with Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, a few years ago in an exclusive interview with CNN, and more recently at a year-end cocktail the government hosts for journalists. But I've never seen him this happy.

Late on Sunday night, Zapatero and his wife, Sonsoles Espinosa, were beaming as they emerged from the elevator at party headquarters. It all took place in just a few seconds.

Suddenly, burly bodyguards held everyone back to clear the narrow hallway on the ground floor, and then came the couple, beaming with broad smiles, arm-in-arm. In an instant, they were already past us, heading quickly outside, as the crowd began to roar.

Up close and personal is how Zapatero and the conservative challenger, Mariano Rajoy, made their hard-nosed campaign. Plenty of insults, inflated statistics during their televised debates, and very little common ground.

Now, as the dust settles, the main points are known: Zapatero wins a second term, and wins the rematch with Rajoy, whom he already beat in 2004 in an upset victory, in the wake of the Madrid train bombings.

Zapatero will surely find a way to govern, even though he again lacks a majority in the 350-seat Spanish parliament. He won 169 seats, five more than his first term, when he also governed without a coalition, instead making deals as he needed them with smaller parties.

“It’s a sufficient plurality, strong and solid, which has the horizon of tackling the Socialist project,” Zapatero told a nationally-televised newscast on Monday.

He was speaking at party headquarters, standing behind a large red “Z” (for Zapatero) that had been fashioned as his lectern.

Zapatero said he would have “an attitude of dialogue” with the nine other parties, including the conservatives, as he seeks a majority to win the investiture vote, still some weeks away. Then he repeated the word, “dialogue,” again and again, in case any of the journalists peppering him with questions had missed it. The message: he knows how to make a parliamentary deal.

He didn’t look at all worried. He bore the same kind of happy face I’d seen up close just hours earlier as he walked by us.

A different mood ruled across town at the headquarters of the Popular Party. The conservatives won more votes and more seats (154 now, 148 last time) than they had in the last elections, but it wasn’t enough to catch Zapatero.

Many here were analyzing Mariano Rajoy’s speech to his followers Sunday night, which he ended by saying, “adios.” Goodbye.

A top party leader, Angel Acebes, at a nationally-televised news conference on Monday repeatedly ducked questions about whether the party would look for a new leader, given Rajoy’s consecutive losses to Zapatero.

“Rajoy is here, in his office, he’s working,” Acebes said. “What’s important today are the more than 10 million Spaniards who voted for us. The party is united.”

But the party bickered openly into the campaign, as Rajoy tried to stop feuding among other top party leaders in Madrid who reportedly wanted to be on the ticket with him.

El Mundo, a paper seen as close to the Popular Party, headlined on its front page Monday that “Rajoy made it understood that he would leave the leadership of the PP.”

The party’s executive committee is to meet on Tuesday, and Acebes said, “We’ll analyze all the work we need to do about the future. Rajoy has a lot of reasons to feel satisfied.”

But various photos of Rajoy from Sunday night showed him with a tight smile, head slightly bowed, and a contemplative expression on the face of his wife, Elvira Fernandez, at his side.