The Argentine collective ecstasy after winning the Qatar World Cup in 2022 had a soundtrack that began like this: “I was born in Argentina, land of Diego and Lionel, of the kids from the Malvinas that I will never forget.” Four years later, in the fight to win the fourth star, Messi, Maradona, and the islands once again shared verses in the new football anthem: “For the Malvinas, for Diego, for Leo’s last one, Argentina, I want to see you two-time champion.”
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In Argentina, football and homeland go hand in hand. There is no greater and more popular nationalist cause here than the recovery of the islands that Great Britain has occupied since 1833. The Malvinas awaken a mixture of pride, pain, and belonging, but they also generate a consensus that makes them a political resource always at hand to shift focus when reality becomes uncomfortable. Javier Milei has just done so.
Why do the Malvinas occupy a central place in the Argentine imagination? Some researchers believe that to understand it, one must go back to the foundational narrative of Argentina and its truncated destiny, the one that nostalgically recalls that it was a powerful and prosperous nation and ceased to be so. “When Argentina emancipated itself from Spain, the Malvinas were included and then they were stolen from us, and that is associated with Argentina’s trauma, with what it could be and is not,” says political scientist Mariana Altieri, author of the book Malvinas y Gibraltar, conflictos atrincherados. She recalls that from the beginning of the British occupation, successive governments and also great literary figures like José Hernández, the author of Martín Fierro, claimed Argentine sovereignty over the islands. “These rights never expire,” Hernández wrote in 1869.
“The further the idea of recovering them drifts away, the more the logic of revenge grows,” Altieri continues, pointing out that football has been one of the arenas where that revenge has been symbolically possible. The most remembered was in 1986, only four years after the Malvinas war, when Diego Armando Maradona scored a goal with his hand and another after dribbling five English players and the goalkeeper in a masterful play. The latest, this 2026, in the World Cup semifinal, with his heir, Lionel Messi, as captain of the Albiceleste in the comeback with which they beat them again 2-1. The euphoria with which the second goal was shouted in front of every television in the country increased at the end of the match, when some players unfolded a handmade flag on the field that read “The Malvinas are Argentine.” No one cared about the expected FIFA sanction.
Anthropologist Rosana Guber, one of the most recognized specialists on the Malvinas war, was convinced there would be some political claim during the match. “The players were a channel. The protagonist was a guy who was at the hotel, who grabbed a sheet and painted the claim on it. No one. Or everyone. Because what he did was shout that we beat them, that we have rights over the islands and that we must be recognized,” Guber states.
This anthropologist, professor, and senior researcher at Conicet believes that the feeling the Malvinas awaken in Argentines is understood if they are thought of as a symbol. “A symbol like the flag, the anthem, or the cross. And symbols have different meanings, not just one. They address people who may have different positions on everything. That was the point Milei appealed to the other day, saying: ‘in this we are all together.’ Just like in 1982,” she points out.
Of all its multiple meanings, Guber highlights three: the pending sovereignty issue that Great Britain does not sit down to resolve with any Argentine government; the popular cause that claims the Malvinas from football stands, in parades, demonstrations, and any other setting; and the 1982 war, to which the dictatorship sent thousands of conscripts aged 19 and 20 and which caused the death of 649 Argentine combatants and 255 British.
An omnipresent drawing
Historian Esteban Rodríguez lives in Río Grande, the city closest to the Malvinas. It is less than 600 kilometers away, compared to almost 12,800 kilometers separating them from the British coasts. The province to which Río Grande belongs, the southernmost in Argentina, is called Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica, and South Atlantic Islands, and the drawing of the islands is on all the uniforms of Fuegian students, on all the kits of local clubs, and on numerous murals and plaques. The provincial anthem is the March of the Malvinas. They learn it from the moment they enter school: “Under its mantle of fog, we shall not forget them, the Argentine Malvinas, the wind cries and the sea roars.”
It is easy to understand this way because Rodríguez states that the Malvinas are an inseparable part of Argentine identity, especially in the south. “We feel the Malvinas as a loss, and it is a loss that is engraved in us because we are reminded all the time,” says this historian. That feeling worsened after the defeat in the war declared by dictator Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri.
Río Grande was the main city in the armed conflict. From there, the Super Etendards took off to bomb British ships. After the defeat, every April 1, on the eve of the day the war began, a vigil is held to pay tribute to the fallen and keep the memory alive. The tribute continued despite the de-Malvinization policies imposed in the eighties and nineties, in which veterans upheld the cause against the tide. Nowadays, despite the low temperatures and the icy wind that blows almost nonstop, “the vigil can gather up to 20,000 people,” says Rodríguez.
Unknown islands
Journalist Nicolás Cassese has just published the novel Puerto Stanley, 1982 and has traveled three times to the Malvinas as a reporter for the newspaper La Nación. He considers that many Argentines know little about those islands beyond the dispossession in 1833 and the war a century and a half later: “The last Argentine nationalist resurgence is based on the triple M —Messi, Maradona, and Malvinas—, but of the first two we have a huge amount of information and about the Malvinas we know almost nothing,” says Cassese.
As an example, he says that when he published the novel, some friends asked him about the title because they did not know what Puerto Stanley referred to, and some associated it with a well-known brand of thermoses. They were unaware that it is the name the British give to the largest town in the archipelago, which on Argentine maps appears as Puerto Argentino. Although on social media he was accused of being a traitor, he explains that the town was founded in 1845, when the British already controlled the islands, and that the Argentines themselves called it that for decades. Among the unknown, he also includes the strong cultural and commercial ties that existed between the Malvinas, Tierra del Fuego, and also the far south of Chile. “The first sheep that arrived in Santa Cruz at the end of the 19th century were brought from the Malvinas,” he says by way of example.
Knowledge about the islands is rarely firsthand. Less than 1% of Argentines have visited the Malvinas. The trip is very expensive, requires staying at least a week, and accepting that your passport is stamped. However, they are an indispensable part of the historical construction of national identity. “In the 19th century, Argentina was a new country, with many immigrants who spoke different languages, and education was very important to create a common identity. The Malvinas were part of the narrative,” Cassese opines. Others, like Guber, believe that the role of schools in the territorial cause was less than often attributed.
Experts talk about the Malvinas as a symbol, a space of mourning, and an open wound. But they are also one of the few meeting places for a society divided in two. That unity has facilitated their political use on numerous occasions. Milei took advantage of a statement by Donald Trump in which he hinted that the United States could review its historically neutral position in the sovereignty dispute over the islands to defend on national television that “the Malvinas are Argentine.” In his speech, which ended with “long live the homeland,” he announced sanctions for companies operating in the area without Argentine authorization and promised the construction of a military base in the south.
Since there is already a 2011 law imposing those sanctions and the announced base had already begun to be built before he stopped it, the opposition accused him of opportunism and of galtierizing the cause. The La Plata Veterans Center (Cecim) called Milei a hypocrite and criticized him for using the Malvinas as a “lifeline to hide his miseries.”
Cassese, on the other hand, believes that “for Milei, embracing the Malvinas cause is all gain” and points out that with it he protects “one of his weak flanks, that of being accused of being a sellout” for trying to reform the law that limits land in foreign hands.
Argentina’s foreign policy on the Malvinas has oscillated for decades between confrontation and attempts at rapprochement. Altieri believes that Milei has so far opted for the cooperation line, just like, before him, Mauricio Macri. In 2025, Milei showed support for the self-determination of the Kelpers: “We long for the Malvinas residents to prefer to vote with their feet for us. That is why we seek to be a power, to the point that they prefer to be Argentine.” On the contrary, his televised speech on Thursday “was a 180-degree turn,” says the political scientist from the Meridiano Foundation.
While the economic course marked by Milei divides society, “the announcement of sanctions, of imposing costs on the British, generates a lot of support; the majority agrees that this is what must be done,” adds Altieri. In his third year of government, Milei has just discovered the power of a flag that transcends the divide.