Spain won the 2026 World Cup. And a Swiss family with Spanish roots in Sion decided to celebrate it in the traditional way: with car horns, hazard lights on and flags hanging out of the windows, just like the fifty or so other cars doing the same.
Thirty minutes after the final whistle, the Valais cantonal police stopped them in their tracks.
The driver was fined 40 francs. The four passengers are expecting to receive theirs in the post, because of the flags sticking out of the car. Selena, 29, a Swiss woman of Spanish descent, puts it bluntly: “They would have sent us something sooner for the honking, but they changed the reason for the fine on the spot. At first they said it was for honking the horn, and as we’d already stopped, they changed their story and said it was for the hazard lights.” She adds: “We were one of fifty cars doing the same thing. I would have appreciated a bit of common sense.”
The technical issue is this: in Valais, the time limit for celebrating by honking your horn after a match ends exactly 30 minutes after the final whistle. In Lausanne and Geneva, the time limit is 60 minutes. The Valais cantonal police make no exceptions: their officers enforce the rules “consistently, uniformly and proportionately” and clarify that the fact that not all vehicles are stopped at the same time does not mean that different criteria are being applied.
What in another canton would have been a night-time anecdote is, in Valais, a case resulting in a fine and possibly an additional penalty notice. Spain wins the World Cup. Each canton decides on its own specific rules.