Spaniards have flocked to pay homage to Real Madrid legend Alfredo Di Stefano, one of the world's greatest footballers, who inspired millions of fans during the daring days of the Franco era.
Hundreds of people queued by the towering walls of the club's Santiago Bernabeu stadium where Di Stefano's body lay in state, a day after he died following a heart attack, aged 88.
Inside, mourners bowed and crossed themselves as they passed in front of his coffin, which was draped with a white Real Madrid flag.
The numerous silver trophies he helped the team win were lined up nearby.
Known as "the Blonde Arrow", Di Stefano was a hero of the all-conquering Real sides of the 1950s and 1960s.
Among Tuesday's mourners, Real Madrid's captain Iker Casillas embraced members of the former player's family, who sat dressed in black in front of big garlands of white flowers.
He paid tribute to Di Stefano's influence on the club.
"His generation of players forged that courage, that hunger and that fighting spirit, which have been passed on from decade to decade," Casillas was quoted as saying on the club's website.
Following tributes from sportsmen around the world as well as the Spanish government and royal family, the press called Di Stefano a "genius", a "legend" and a "complete player".
Di Stefano had entered a coma after suffering a heart attack on Saturday. He died on Monday at the Gregorio Maranon hospital, Real Madrid said in a statement.
"He has left us, but his legend will live forever," Real Madrid chairman Florentino Perez told a news conference on Monday evening.
On Tuesday, Madrid sports daily Marca left its cover all white except for a small black-and-white photograph of the back of a departing Di Stefano waving in his number 9 shirt.
The director of rival sports daily AS, Alfredo Relano, said Di Stefano's exploits on foreign football fields gave Spain pride in the 1950s, during the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.
"In the poor, isolated, aged and introverted Spain of the second half of the 1950s, there was something to hang on to: Real Madrid, the European Cup, those remote games in Belgrade, Vienna, Brussels, Glasgow," Relano said.
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