United Spanish Team Unites a Nation
Filed under: FIFA World Cup, Spain
JOHANNESBURG — The city whose club forms the backbone of the Spanish national team, Barcelona, has not hosted a national team game in more than six years. The country’s soccer governing body, the Real Federación Española de Fútbol, must not feel very welcome in Spain’s second-largest city, where love for king (”Real” signifies his patronage) and country comes second to the devotion to the “autonomous region” of Catalonia, its language and its most important of institutions, the Futbol Club Barcelona.
Share Traditionally, Catalonians regard La Furia Roja with some mixed emotions. They are Spanish, technically, but the 40 years of repression they suffered under Francisco Franco during the middle of the 20th century came wrapped in the Spanish flag. FC Barcelona was their refuge, and as a result the rivalry between the Blaugrana and Real Madrid, which represents the central power of the state, is the fiercest in the world.
On Saturday, the day before Spain was to meet the Netherlands in the World Cup final, more than a million people throughout Catalonia demonstrated for greater regional autonomy. A 2006 statute granting enhanced authority to the local parliament was gutted by the Spanish national court, prompting the protest. Agence France Presse reported that one large column of marchers carried a flag saying “We are a nation. We decide ourselves.”
In the past, rivalry between Madrid and Barcelona players within the Spanish national team was thought to be one of the reasons the side so frequently underperformed. There is no rivalry this time, and ironically, it is Barça that has contributed the largest number of players to the team that for so long represented the denial of Catalan identity. There is even a Catalonia national team, coached by Dutch and Barcelona legend Johann Cruyff, that plays occasional exhibitions. They beat Argentina, 4-2, last December.
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