Cheering for Barça: FC Barcelona and the Shaping of Catalan Identity
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Cheering for Barça: FC Barcelona and the shaping of Catalan identity Emma Kate Ranachan Department of Art History and Communication Studies McGill University Montréal, Quebec, Canada August 2008 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts © Kate Ranachan (2008) i Table of Contents Acknowledgements.....................................................................................................ii Abstract……………………………………………………………………………...iii Résumé……………………………………………………………………………….iv Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1 – Literature Review…………………………………………………….10 Sport, Society and Politics…………………………………………………...11 Sport and Globalisation………………………………………………………22 Chapter 2 – The Birth of a Club and a Political Movement……………………..30 From Recognition to Repression…………………………………………….38 Camp Nou……………………………………………………………………44 Rivals………………………………………………………………………...45 A New Dawn…...……………………………………………………………49 Chapter 3 – Representing Catalunya.......................................................................51 Who is a Catalan?............................................................................................52 Culture and Politics………………………………………………....………..56 The Camp Nou as Cultural/National Instrument…………………………….59 Acknowledging the Nation…………………………………………………..68 FC Barcelona’s Catalan Nation……………………………………………...70 Chapter 4 – At Home Abroad?.................................................................................77 Who’s Club Is It?.............................................................................................80 The Socially Responsible Club………………………………………………83 The Museum …………………...……………………………………………97 Building a Catalan National Team………………………………………….100 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………104 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………….109 i Acknowledgements I would like to begin by thanking my advisor Prof. Darin Barney for his immeasurable support and help. This project would not have been possible without his early enthusiasm and assistance in organising my research trip. I am indebted to Media@Mcgill and the Faculty of Arts for each awarding me a graduate travel award. With their generous support I was able to undertake invaluable field research in Barcelona. I would like to thank Antoni Aira Foix and Marta Cantijoch Cunill for helping me arrange interviews in Barcelona and Davide Calenda for his helpful suggestions in tracking down resources. I am deeply indebted to Jordi Penas, Antoni Rovira and Victorio Beceiro for generously giving me their time. Their insights into the workings of FC Barcelona were indispensable to my project. I would also like to thank the dozens of Barça supporters that shared their passion and love for Barça with me. I would like to thank my friends and roommates for listening and learning more about Barça and Catalan nationalism than they wanted to. I owe a debt of gratitude to Zoé Cappe for her translation skills. To my parents, for their love and support, which helped make this project possible. Lastly, to the people of Glasgow whose joyful celebrations when England lost to Germany in Euro 96 showed me the possibilities that football opens up for national expression and set me on this path. ii Abstract This thesis examines the relationship between Football Club Barcelona (Barça) and the Catalan nationalist movement. From its creation, Barça has been identified as a Catalan club. This identity took on new meaning during the Franco period when the regime’s oppression of Catalan society drove all expressions of Catalan identity out of the public sphere. It was through the club and within the walls of the Camp Nou stadium that Catalunya was able to sustain its identity. The end of the Franco regime has created new opportunities for national expression and political solutions and the forces of globalisation have expanded Barça’s fan base beyond the borders of Catalunya and now includes many who do not identify with the Catalan cause. This thesis assesses how the end of Franco and globalisation have changed Barça’s Catalan identity and whether Barça might provide a model for expanding our understanding of the roles that cultural institutions can play in developing, shaping and sustaining sub-state nationalist identities. iii Résumé Ce mémoire examine la relation entre le Football Club Barcelona (Barça) et le mouvement nationaliste catalan. Dès sa création, Barça fut perçu comme un club catalan. Cette identité a pris un nouvel aspect pendant le régime de Franco, qui, par l’oppression de la société catalane, a poussé l’expression de l’identité catalane hors de la sphère publique. La Catalogne est parvenue à maintenir son identité grâce au club et au stade Camp Nou. La fin du régime de Franco a créé de nouvelles opportunités pour l’expression nationale, alors que les solutions politiques et les forces de la mondialisation ont étendu le support de Barça au delà des frontières de la Catalogne : beaucoup de supporters aujourd’hui n’adhèrent pas à la cause catalane. Ce mémoire examine comment la fin du régime de Franco ainsi que la mondialisation ont changé l’identité catalane de Barça, et la façon dont Barça peut servir de modèle pour approfondir la compréhension des rôles que les institutions culturelles peuvent jouer dans le développement, le façonnement et le maintien des identités nationalistes minoritaires à l’intérieur d’un État. iv Introduction In Vienna on June 29th, 2008 the Spanish national football team was crowned European Champions for only the second time in their history. This victory freed Spain from its reputation as perennial underachievers and saw them finally live up to the expectations commensurate with the team’s talent. This victory could be enjoyed in a way that the first one, coming in 1962 and at home, could not. While the 1962 win has been credited with helping to bring Spain back to the international sporting stage after a period of isolation, for many in the country the victory will always been tainted by the spectre of Franco. It was not a victory for Spain, but for Franco’s vision of Spain, which excluded a large swath of the population. In the post-Franco period, Spain struggled at the international level and the blame for their defeat often fell at the feet of players that came from the previously repressed regions of Catalunya and the Basque region. While the teams undeniably had the talent to win tournaments, they played like individual players and not as a team. The lack of team unity was seen as being the fault of those who were not Spanish enough. Yet 2008 felt different. All the talk coming out of the team’s camp was that the players were united and focused. Spain’s subsequent triumph was seen by many as being emblematic of the new united Spain that had overcome its fractured past and was moving towards a new vision of Spanish identity (Ball 2008; Govan 2008; Keeley 2008; Stewart 2008). While it is true that all the players on the team were genuinely excited about their victory, how the various players chose to celebrate indicate that the proclamation of a singular Spanish identity may have been premature. While many of the players chose to literally wrap themselves in the Spanish flag, none of the players from the Basque Region or Catalunya chose to celebrate in this manner. In fact the reaction of the Basque player Xabi Alonso at 1 being handed a Spanish flag was tentative and uncomfortable, and he quickly passed it on to another player. The Spanish flag was not the only flag on display. Sergio Ramos wrapping himself in the Andalusian flag did not spark a negative reaction. However there was a perception being that if the Catalan or Basque players had tried to wrap themselves in their flags, the criticism would have been swift and strident. The celebrations in the streets of Barcelona were muted compared to the celebrations in Madrid or other cities around Spain. One could not help but feel that while the Catalans could appreciate the talent of the Spanish team, it was not their team. Indeed this position has longed been filled by another team, a team that has come to represent the hopes and national aspirations of Catalunya: Football Club Barcelona, more commonly known by its nickname Barça. Barça is known throughout the world by its famous slogan, mes que un Club or “more than a Club” whereby the Club has come to be associated with the Catalan identity. From its conception, Barça has been defined through its identification with the cause of Catalan nationalism, but it was under the repression of the Franco regime that the true meaning of “more than a Club” became evident. Having been stripped of their access to other forms of nationalist identification, Catalan society turned to the Club as a surrogate to shelter their nationalist aspirations. With Franco’s death in 1975, the repression of Catalan society was lifted and ushered in a new era in which Catalunya was granted recognition and its own parliament. While the current political arrangement is an improvement, it falls short of full independence or even the full acknowledgement of Catalunya’s status as a nation in its own right. Spain’s new constitution was completed in 1978 and divided the country into 17 autonomous regions. Catalunya, Galicia and the Basque Region were recognised as the three 2 historic regions and were allowed to fast-track their path to devolved power1 (Green 2007). The constitution did make it clear that Spain was one indivisible nation despite the presence of the strong regional