A Catalan Perspective

Credits:  jmsera Flickriver

Josep Cru is a Catalan lecturer at Newcastle University. He was kind enough to answer some of my questions about the role FC Barcelona plays in Catalonia.

In what ways do you think FCB represents Catalan identity? Do you have any specific examples of this?

Teaching languages and Catalan here, one the things that all of my students find striking when they go to Barcelona and go to the stadium, is that all the announcements are in Catalan. That is very symbolic of the power of the language, announcing in Catalan to 100,000 people. I think that it’s a very good way of letting people know that we have a different language, a different culture, a different identity.

Do you think that FCB is a vehicle for expressing Catalanism?

Yes definitely.  I think that it has become a vehicle for expressing Catalan identity, but because of globalisation, it is becoming an international team like Manchester United who have fans all over the world. You can have a Japanese guy who is a Man U fan and you can have the same thing with FC Barcelona. But the club is definitely rooted in Catalan identity, for historical reasons with the memory of being a kind of haven for expressing Catalan identity and for being used as a political weapon in Franco’s time. So I think it is still very much rooted in Catalonia but at the same time there is this opening to globalisation and becoming a kind of international football club.

Do you think the globalisation of the club affects how it represents Catalan identity?

Catalans really want to let other people know about our culture and language. We’re basically very proud of our culture and language. And many people know about Barcelona but not Catalonia as a country or as a nation, if you want to use that politically loaded notion! Like here, you have the Scottish and Welsh nations and there’s no problem with that, but using the word nation within Spain is more problematic because officially there is only one nation. So one of the main problems it that many people know now about Barcelona being a Catalan team but we need to go further and let people know about the country, not just the city. It’s because after the Olympics, Barcelona became a world city. But one of the main challenges for Catalan people now and in the coming years, is to do what we did with Barcelona and do the same with Catalonia.

Do you think that the football club can help with that?

Yes it can help but it is also grabbing all the attention. It’s like a double edged sword in a way. In way it’s the best way to let the world know about Catalonia. If you talk to Catalan people, you’ll see that there is Barcelona and then the rest. The centrality of Barcelona is good, you have the capital of a nation, but on the other hand what happens to other cities and others parts of Catalonia is that they become kind of blurred, obscured or non-existent because Barcelona stands out all the time. Catalonia is usually conflated with Barcelona and many Catalan people who are not from Barcelona complain about that. What about the rest of us? Catalonia is more than just FC Barcelona.

Do you think that the club has a role to play in Catalan politics? Do you think that it can be involved in politics as well as being a sporting club?

It has been in the past and it will be in the future. It’s too powerful and politics and sports are interconnected, there are links. The former president of FC Barcelona Laporta is now an MP in the Catalan parliament. So there are connections, definitely. It’s a very powerful weapon and not to use it for political reasons would be naïve. To think sport is just sport … it’s not like that. At least not in Spain it isn’t.

Do you think it’s right for the club and sometimes the players, the managers or the president to get involved in politics?

I don’t know if it’s right or wrong. It’s difficult to say. What I want to highlight is that it is almost inevitable. But football players in Barcelona always try to shut their mouths and not say anything about Catalonia because they play for the Spanish national team. Not many of them, but some of them who are more Catalanist or engaged in Catalan politics, they always have to be very careful about what they say because then the mass media in Madrid can really destroy them. Oleguer Presas, who was an FC Barcelona player about ten years ago, was one of the few who said he would not play for the Spanish national team, for political reasons. He did not feel Spanish at all. It was in all the newspapers, like a scandal. He actually moved to Holland and to Ajax because in Spain it was very difficult for him. But many of the football players really try to keep a low profile and not say anything. When they are asked by journalists they always say, “No we just play, we are sportsmen, we don’t want to go into politics”, because they know that anything they say can be taken and thrown against them. It’s highly politicised.  It’s a question of clashes of identity.

FC Barcelona seems to be firmly linked with promoting Catalan culture, Catalan language and Catalan identity, but also seems to have quite firmly distanced itself from the independence movement. Do you think that, as with the players, it’s about not wanting to give out the wrong message?

Yes, but I think that it’s becoming more and more prominent, the independence issue. Maybe ten years ago very few people would really think of an independent Catalonia saying that’s almost impossible, we are more or less fine and happy with government in Madrid, at the end of the day we’ll reach an agreement. But now people’s opinions are very split.

Do you think the club will have to get involved?

Yes, I think they will in the end, probably. If things are progressing in this direction with the Partido Popular in Madrid … We’ll see! But they will have to take sides in a way.

When I was living in Barcelona during the Euros, I was pleasantly surprised that there was a lot of support for la Roja. Do you think that the support for the Spanish national team has changed over the years since their success?

Yes. It is really complicated because many people who support FC Barcelona are also happy when the Spanish national team wins. But one of the main reasons is that many FC Barcelona players are playing for the Spanish national team. So there is this connection. But I think that if there were maybe only one or two players, it would be different. But the whole identity thing, being Catalan, sometimes isn’t so clear-cut, isn’t so exclusive. Many of my friends and myself for example, I grew up in Barcelona but my parents are from a different part of Spain and that is the case for about 70% of people living in Catalonia. It’s a place of immigration from different parts and there have always been players from everywhere too. So sometimes you have to think about identity in a more fluid way. Sometimes I can feel more Catalan and sometimes I can feel more Spanish. It’s a contextual thing, it’s not that clear-cut. There are people who can feel very Catalan, not Spanish at all. There are people who are very Catalan but also Spanish in a way. And then there are people who feel more Spanish than Catalan even though they were born and bred in Barcelona. There is this wide range of identities. So I’m not surprised when La Roja wins that there are many people who are very happy and cheering because it is a part of ourselves in a way as well.

Do you think that people, particularly the younger generations, are no longer ashamed or scared of being proud of Spain and the national team because it’s not associated with Franco or nationalism anymore?

Yes that’s right. I think that it’s linked particularly to what happened in the nineties. It was like an economic, social and cultural miracle. We had a World Exhibition in Seville, we had the Olympics in Barcelona and Spain became a modern and outgoing country. So there was a moment, in that decade particularly, when there was such a big change from two decades before when Spain was almost underdeveloped, there was a dictatorship, it was awful, an awful situation. And then just twenty years later there was this miracle of becoming this modern country, within the European Union, economically developed, and culturally interesting. People were really proud of being Spanish at that time when maybe twenty years previously there was still that idea of Spain not being a very nice country within Europe. The nineties was a key decade. It was fantastic.

Do you think that the success of the Spanish nation team is also a success for Catalonia?

It is definitely. It’s very connected to the way that football is understood in Catalonia and La Masia. There has been a real change and the way that FC Barcelona has been playing in the last decade, it has very much influenced the way in which la Roja plays. But one of the real questions is whether la Roja could have a Catalan coach. They have many FC Barcelona players but remember that the coach is Del Bosque. He used to play for Real Madrid; he’s very much connected to Madrid and to central Spain. I don’t know if the Spanish national team will ever have a Basque or a Catalan coach. Particularly a coach that feels very Catalan. Like Guardiola for example, I don’t know if he would even take the job in the first place! But also, what would Spanish people think of having a Catalan coach for the Spanish national team? I think that the socio-political situation now would not allow that, definitely.

What do you think about Catalan independence? Do you think it would be good thing or not?

I think it’s difficult in many ways because one of the main things is that people have links, connections and family and relatives in different places in Spain. It would really weird to go and visit my family in another country. But in the European context and now having the European Union which is getting more and more important, I think Catalonia could be a small State like Denmark. Many Catalans say that Denmark with 5 million people is a small country, very developed, very high-tech and very good education. Why couldn’t we be the Denmark of Southern Europe? But there are many challenges.

And one of the challenges is, if Catalonia did become independent, what would happen with the football? Would Barcelona play in La Liga? It’s not just political is it?

Exactly. It would be impossible to have a Catalan league like the Scottish league, it could be really boring. But there are also people who say that we need to think of a kind of European league with the top clubs. Again that’s very typical. Catalans looking towards Europe to leave Spain behind, thinking that the only way out is to think of Europe as our political framework instead of looking at the nation-state.