El Barça flying the Catalan flag with prideSize matters. Talking about FC Barcelona without facts and figures is like describing the Empire State Building without mentioning it’s height. The 18 times La Liga Champions boast the only ever-present record in 52 years of European Competitions. No football club in the world can match Barça’s 156,000 socis (members) each and every Soci gets a vote in our presidential elections. The Barça museum is Catalunya’s number one tourist attraction; not even Madrid’s El Prado can match its best single month score of 236,476 visitors in August 2000. And what other football club boasts over 1,800 penyes all other the planet. Media interest in Ronaldinho, Messi and co is way off the chart. Barça is the only sports club to feed two daily newspapers Sport and El Mundo Deportivo. Television coverage is of the Big Brother variety. No wonder FC Barcelona motto reads Mes Que Un Club (More Than A Club)Size clearly matters then.
But sentiments matter even more. Strictly speaking, Barça are s club side, but most of Catalunya’s 6 million population will tell you the Blaugranas are their national side. That is what makes FC Barcelona really different from other clubs like Manchester United, Juventus, Reial Madrid etc. These are all massive football clubs, but none of them take the hopes and dreams of a nation onto the field every weekend. Neither have they had a President shot in a fratricidal bloodbath. Before General Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) dictated over wise, a quasi-official Catalan XI played matches on a regular basis. “Nobody thinks its strange that Scotland of Wales have International sides,” says Jordi Pujol ex-president of Catalunya’s regional parliament. “We would love to have our own team, too.” Until they do, Catalan football fans will have to make do with annual Christmas friendlies while Barça fly the flag in more meaningful contents.
FC Barcelona was not born a political animal. Founding father Joan Gamper and his expat buddies only established a club for a Saturday morning kick about it was Franco’s censoring of all things Catalan that consecrated Barça’s role as a figurehead of resistance to a reactionary state. With Catalunya’s flag outlawed, allowing Barça’s Blaugrana to become a substitute for the Catalan National flag as a political statement. Les Corts and later Camp Nou were the only place where Catalans could speak their own native language for decades Every year several million people visit Catalunya to recharge their batteries on the Coasta Brava or the Coasta Dorada or simply for spectacular sites for example Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia but beyond the Nations beauty, what exactly is Catalunya and why has Barça became its most celebrated ambassador?
Hemmed in by the Pyrenees to the North and the Mediterranean to the east, Catalunya’s relative geographical isolation is the main reason it developed a language and character that differ from the rest of the Iberian peninsula. The Romans first established a settlement in Barcelona in 15 BC; they were followed by Vandals, Visigoths and Franks. Catalan folk-hero Wilfred the Hairy served the Franks so loyally his Barcelona domain was granted independence in 878. Frankish indifference when the Moors sacked Barcelona a hundred years later left his descendants free to forge their own destiny. This was the birth of Catalunya’s Golden age as the counts of Barcelona established a powerful medieval alliance with the neighbouring Aragon.
The crown of Aragon and Catalunya was a formidable at a time when the rest of Spain still consisted of Christian and Moorish fiefdoms. It wasn’t until 1469 and Ferdinand of Aragon’s marriage to Isabella of Castile that Spain became a united country. After the Catholic monarchs ousted the last Moors from Andalusia in 1492, they concentrated on building their Castilian power base. A reluctant Catalunya was gradually sucked into its orbit as a province of Greater Spain; the war of the Reapers, a Catalan peasant revolt against King Philip IV, lasted ten years before Barcelona fell to his armies in 1652. In the eighteenth century, backed a loser in the war of Spanish succession. When Charles II died in 1700 with no heir, Castile accepted a bourbon King as Philip V of Spain. Seduced by Austria’s pledge to restore the crown of Aragon and Catalunya, the Catalans backed Archduke Charles’ alliance with Britain and Holland. In 1713, British and Dutch withdrawal left Catalunya stranded; after a 13 month siege, Barcelona fell to the Bourbon armies on September 11th 1714. King Philip abolished all regional bodies and outlawed the Catalan language. This was the beginning of two centuries in the wilderness for Catalunya’s pretensions of independence
When FC Barcelona was founded in 1899, Catalan independence was beginning to recapture its place on the political agenda. In the first three decades if the centaury, progressive ideas were widespread in Catalunya long before they were filtered through the rest of Spain. Barcelona’s port location and proximity to France made it Spain’s most cosmopolitan city. Hence the Catalans were among the major losers of the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that traced the ideological battle lines of the Second World War. Among the terminal victims was Barça president and Catalan member of parliament Josep Sunyol, shot dead by a fascist firing-squad in August 1936.
The smoke from Spain’s internecine war did not clear entirely until November 1975 and the dieing breath of General Franco. One of the few tenets of the dictator’s ideology not borne of political expediency was the conviction that Spain is a united body with its head in Madrid. Franco, like the countries Hapsburg and bourbon monarchs before him, believed ‘Spain is a thing made in Castile’.Catalans themselves are divided on their homeland’s denomination, but whether country or region Catalunya is not Spain. Catalunya is bigger than Belgium and roughly twice the size of Wales with its own elected president and parliament. Catalunya is country within country no question about it.
Outside the Barcelona seat of government, the Catalan Senyera flutters alongside the Spanish flag, symbolising Catalunya’s claim for independence. On December 28, 1975. Just 38 days after Franco’s death, Barca entertained arch-rivals Reial Madrid at Camp Nou. Before the game the board gave away free tickets and Senyera’s to thousands of school children. When local Catalan idol Carles Rexach scored a late winner, those Red and Gold Senyera’s were unfurled made for a highly symbolic backdrop.
These similar traditions of Nationalism and support for football clubs are evident worldwide but for Barça nowadays Fans, Socis and Penyes are sprouting up in Catalan, in all regions of Spain and all over the world, not just for the Catalanism embodied in the club, but for the glamour, stars and historical side of Futbol Club Barcelona, but for locals and Catalan Nationalists Barça will always be regarded as the club standing for their political beliefs language and culture.
Visça El Barça I Visça Catalunya
ou wounder is he was human or not?
ou wounder is he was human or not?
