National orientation, universal outlook - the symbolic capital of FC Barcelona in the global era
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European Journal for Sport and Society 2008, 5 (1), 63-71
National orientation, universal outlook – the symbolic
capital of FC Barcelona in the global era
Ramón Llopis Goig
University of Valencia
Abstract: From its beginnings, FC Barcelona has been a sports entity in which an important
nationalist orientation has coincided with a culture of integration and global openness. The
first characteristic was forged from the second decade of the 20th century, when the club
became a symbol of Catalonia. The second could be detected throughout the 20th century,
both in the foreign origins of its founders and in the majority of its star players, as well as in
the inter-classism and universality that characterizes its followers. This article examines to
what extent FC Barcelona can continue to be seen nowadays as an institution that articulates
the local and the global in Catalan society.
Keywords: FC Barcelona, Catalonia, football, globalization.
Introduction
For some time, sociology and social anthropology have emphasized the capacity of
sports to provide an ideal space for the expression of the collective identities and local,
regional or national antagonisms. The fans of a team identify intensely with the teams
from their town, region or country, because they regard them as symbols of a specific
type of collective existence (Bromberger, 2000, 262). Furthermore, the extension of
football to all social levels makes it possible for a feeling of common belonging to
emerge that demonstrates its capacity for “creating community”. In this way, football
has also contributed to giving a new equilibrium to modern societies by means of the
re-composition of collective identities (Wahl, 1997, 51).
Spanish sociology has never shown much interest in football. This fact may be
due both to its late institutional consolidation and to the predominance of a theoretical
tradition that considered this sport a “social drug”. Currently, however, as football has
become the global game par excellence (Giulianotti, 1999), it is difficult to deny the
extraordinary interest that its study is awakening as a space for the cultural globali-
zation process.
One excellent case to study in this regard may be found in FC Barcelona. The
Barça, as it is called by its followers, is the identitary symbol par excellence of the
nation without a state that is Catalonia. Not in vain, FC Barcelona has been defined as
“the epic sublimation of the Catalan people” (Artells, 1972, 7), and it has been de-
scribed as “more than just a club” to reflect the transcending power of its performances
(Cirili & Mercè Varela, 1975, 4). Furthermore, it is the club with the greatest number
of members throughout the world; it has followers on the five continents; and it has64 Ramón Llopis Goig
always been characterized by the foreign origins of its star players. And if that were
not enough, FC Barcelona is one of the most powerful examples of the socio-cultural
integration of the ethnic minorities that reside in Catalonia. All of this has contributed
to the fact that, historically, the nationalism that has characterized the club and the
majority of its followers has been described as “cosmopolitan” (Foer, 2004, 171).
This article empirically examines to what extent FC Barcelona continues to main-
tain its symbolic capital as an emblem of Catalonia in the context of globalization and
the strong transformations that have affected European football during the past decade.
For this purpose, data from diverse surveys and statistical almanacs were analysed.
First, however, a brief review of the history of FC Barcelona will be offered as it
relates to the main objectives of the article.
A historical view of FC Barcelona
At the end of the nineteenth century, the city of Barcelona had an important position in
the Mediterranean world. It was a city with a strong commercial character that had
already become an industrial power, as is shown by the fact that only the United
States, England and France surpassed the industrial production of Catalonia. At that
time, various football clubs were created in Barcelona, mainly made up of foreigners.
One of them, FC Barcelona, was founded in 1899 by a 22-year-old Swiss business-
man, Hans Gamper, who formed an association with other Swiss, some people from
England, and with some Germans and Austrians (Lanfranchi, 1997, 12). One year
later, RCD Español was created, made up mainly of university students and with a
clear Spanish character from the beginning (Colomé, 1997, 170).
Hans Gamper integrated easily into Catalonia,1 and under his mandate the club
adopted a coat of arms with the national colours of Catalonia and the cross of Saint
George, the patron Saint of Catalonia. As the president of FC Barcelona, Gamper sup-
ported the autonomist aspirations of the Catalans, which made it possible for the club
to becoming quickly integrated into the cultural and political life of Catalonia (Pujadas
& Santacana, 1999). This process was also aided by the fact that FC Barcelona, before
the dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera, supported projects like the celebration of
the Olympic Games in Barcelona. In contrast, RCD Español was considered by the
followers of Barça to be a club with a centralist and Spanish orientation.
The symbolism of FC Barcelona grew during the dictatorship of General Primo de
Rivera, who came to power in 1923 to mark the beginning of a military dictatorship
that would foreshadow the later Francoist period. Primo de Rivera eliminated Catalan
from the public sphere and prohibited the Catalan flag2. This flag was replaced during
public demonstrations by the flag of Barça, thus generating a symbolic fusion between
the two flags that would be repeated during the dictatorship of General Franco. An
incident that had a great impact during this period was the closing, in 1925 and for a
1 As proof, he catalanized his name, substituting “Joan” for “Hans”.
2 Known by the Catalans as la senyera.The symbolic capital of FC Barcelona in the global era 65
period of six months, of the old FC Barcelona stadium, Les Corts, after the fans booed
the Spanish national hymn at the beginning of a friendly match (Colomé, 1997, 172).
The persecution of the Catalan symbols by the Primo de Rivera regime confronted
the social reality of an entity that found itself in a golden age (Pujadas & Santacana,
1999, 36). This could be seen in the 25th anniversary celebration in 1924, an occasion
the club took advantage of to state publicly its relationship to Catalanism in the broad
sense. The dictator Primo de Rivera resigned in 1930, and the Republic was pro-
claimed on 14 April 1931. One year later, Catalonia obtained a Statute of Autonomy
that recognized its differential characteristics. These were years of tension in which
society was progressively becoming divided into the two sides that would finally con-
front each other in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). After the war, FC Barcelona
was to live its least happy hours. The club did not have players to form a team, the
number of members had reduced dramatically, and a bomb had destroyed its social
headquarters. Furthermore, its president had been arrested and executed.
The new dictatorial regime mistrusted FC Barcelona, as it identified it as an entity
committed to the Republican and Catalan cause. The dictator Francisco Franco never
hid his aversion to the club. Catalonia had been the region that had resisted his military
uprising with the greatest force. Moreover, many FC Barcelona players had joined the
fight against the military insurrection in 1936. And if that were not enough, Franco
was a fan of Real Madrid, the club of the country’s capital, which already had a strong
rivalry with FC Barcelona. Thus, a new era began. The central government of the new
regime castilianized the name of the club and appointed a new board of directors, with
an ex-captain of the Anti-Marxist Division of the “Guardia Civil” in charge of it. The
club found itself in a complicated position. From a socio-political point of view, its
symbolic capital was in danger. Things were not going well from the football perspec-
tive either, which is demonstrated by the fact that in 1942 the team had to dispute a
threatened relegation to avoid descending into the second division. However, the fans
never turned their backs on the club and the number of its members grew considerably
during the 1940s. Throughout the forty years of Franco’s dictatorship, the club grad-
ually recovered its symbolic capital, even becoming one of the main vehicles for
expressing Catalan sentiments.
In this new scenario, the Real Madrid club was to emerge as a symbol of Cen-
tralist Spain and, therefore, the main rival of FC Barcelona. This fact made the rivalry
between FC Barcelona and RCD Español a secondary issue. The matches between FC
Barcelona and Real Madrid teams became true performances of Catalanism, which
made the old stadium of Les Corts the only place for Catalans to meet and express
themselves as Catalans. This rivalry with Real Madrid was strengthened by the “Di
Stéfano matter”. Di Stéfano was an Argentine player contracted by Real Madrid with
the help of the Franco regime, in spite of having been hired previously by FC Barce-
lona, and the victories of the white team, Real Madrid, in the European Cup during the
1950s led him to be considered the best “ambassador of the regime”.
The 1960s and 1970s saw the transformation of FC Barcelona into the true cata-
lyst of the nationalistic aspirations of the Catalans. During the Franco period, those66 Ramón Llopis Goig
who were hostile towards the regime found in football a means of expressing and
projecting their identity, perhaps with the tacit acceptance of the regime, who saw it as
an escape valve that mitigated regional tensions. FC Barcelona became the national
team of Catalonia, and its matches became nationalist performances. With the presi-
dency of Agustí Montalt (1969-1977), the club began an ambitious policy of Catalani-
zation. In 1972, the senyera flew in the stadiums, and Catalan was heard over the
megaphones, and one year later the club recovered its original name. The club in-
creased its nationalist orientation at the same time that it increased its capacity to
integrate the waves of immigration that arrived in Catalonia from other regions of
Spain in the 1950s and 1970s.
With the transition to democracy, football faced a transformation of the organi-
zational structures designed by Franco’s regime. A process of democratization had
begun, and the clubs returned to their members the right to vote in the presidential
elections. The patriotic rhetoric that characterized the information about the Spanish
national team began to disappear. The Spain of the Autonomies was projected in foot-
ball, and the clubs became the reflection of the pluralist-nationalist character of the
Spanish state. The identitary hegemony of Real Madrid and the Spanish national team
were weakened, and other clubs gained strength and acquired identitary resonance.
Method
The purpose of this study is to examine the significance that FC Barcelona currently
has for its followers, its identitary implications and its association as a symbol of
Catalonia. Related to this, an examination will also be carried out of the evaluation the
fans make of the presence of foreign players in the team. In order to carry out this task,
the data contained in various surveys and statistical almanacs were used. In the first
place, we used various almanacs of the Marca sports newspaper (2005, 2006, 2007), as
well as other sources that include data on the numbers of members or peñas of the club
(Finestres, 2004; LFP, 2006). Second, the results were used from a survey carried out
in the framework of a sociological research programme subsidized by the Generalitat
de Cataluña, specifically the Informe Sociológico Anual (ISA), corresponding to the
year 2003. This is a survey with a sample size of 3,000 interviews covering the whole
of Spain, of which 800 took place entirely in Catalonia. Third, data were used from the
study La imagen de Cataluña en España (The Image of Catalonia in Spain), which is
also found within the general programme of sociological research supported by the
Generalitat de Cataluña that was referred to above.3
Results
One of the traits that has traditionally characterized FC Barcelona is the presence of
foreign players in the team. However, the elimination of the protectionist measures
from national football markets, after the Bosman ruling in 1995, opened national bor-
ders to players from within the European Union and made it possible for football clubs
3 These reports are available at www.cathoy.es.The symbolic capital of FC Barcelona in the global era 67
in the European Union to hire players from other community countries without count-
ing them as foreigners. From that moment on, the players from other European Union
states were no longer considered foreigners, and they could be employed without a
limit on their numbers in other states of the European Union. European football re-
flected the Bosman ruling and immediately the clubs from countries with the most
competitive championships recruited numerous European Union players. To these
were added various South American and African players with European Union pass-
ports, either because they had European Union family backgrounds or because they
were citizens of former European colonies. FC Barcelona has not been immune to
these changes, and, as table 1 shows, two-thirds of the players in the current team were
not born in Spain, a percentage that is significantly larger than the average for the
clubs in the Spanish First Division. It may be confidently stated, therefore, that FC
Barcelona is one of the most internationalized clubs in Spanish football.
Table 1. Foreign players in FC Barcelona
Dual nationality
Composition of the Non-EU Dual nationality (foreign and Total
teams nationality EU nationality (foreign and EU) Spanish) foreigners
2004-2005 Season
FC Barcelona 29.2% 12.5% 12.5% - 54.2%
First Division 11.4% 7.1% 6.1% 4.3% 28.9%
2006-2007 Season
FC Barcelona 12.5% 25.0% 16.7% 12.5% 66.7%
First Division 9.0% 10.2% 9.8% 5.0% 34.1%
Source: Elaborated by the author based on Marca Almanacs for 2005, 2006 and 2007.
Another distinctive trait of FC Barcelona in comparison with regard to other big Euro-
pean clubs is that the club is owned by its members, who use universal suffrage to
choose the board of directors that represents them. In September of 2006, the club had
130,000 members, a number that was practically double that of the 69,000 of Real
Madrid, the Spanish club with the second highest number of members. Table 2 shows
the constant increase in the number of members of FC Barcelona throughout the
twentieth century (only interrupted during the period 1936-1939, owing to the Spanish
Civil War), and, more importantly, the increase in this growth during the past fifteen
years. This tendency demonstrates that the growing internationalization of the FC
Barcelona team has had no influence on the evolution of club membership, which
continues to grow at a strong rate.68 Ramón Llopis Goig
Table 2. Evolution of the number of members of FC Barcelona
Year Members Year Members
1899 32 1961 41,000
1920 4,000 1970 52,400
1923 12,000 1974 66,451
1939 2,500 1999 105,173
1941 10,000 2004 125,000
1945 21,900 2006 130,000
1949 25,000
Source: Elaborated by the author and based on Finestres (2004) and LFP (2006).
In the same way, the evolution of the number of peñas4 demonstrates a clear tendency
toward growth. These peñas, which are found all over the world, have gone from num-
bering eight in 1955 to 1,638 in the year 2004, with a strong growth recorded in the
past twenty years.
Table 3. Evolution of the number of peñas of FC Barcelona
1955 1965 1979 1986 1998 2004
8 49 96 413 1,262 1,638
Source: Elaborated by the author based on Finestres (2004).
What has to be asked next is whether this internationalization has affected the tra-
ditional connection of FC Barcelona with Catalonia. The available data, included in
table 4, show that 53% of Catalans associate FC Barcelona with the idea of Catalonia,
far ahead of those who associate it with a football team (21%), or with the city of
Barcelona (17%), and in contrast to the rest of Spain, which associates it first with the
idea of a football team.
Table 4. Image of FC Barcelona in Catalonia and in the rest of Spain
With what do you first identify With a With the city With
Total
FC Barcelona? football team of Barcelona Catalonia
Answers in Catalonia 21% 17% 53% 100%
Answers in the rest of Spain 35% 28% 29% 100%
Source: La imagen de Cataluña en España.
These results reveal that for the Catalan fans the “multinational” composition of the
FC Barcelona team is compatible with its character as a national symbol of Catalonia.
This apparent paradox is better reflected in the data contained in table 5. There, it can
be seen that both the Catalan fans of FC Barcelona, and those from the rest of Spain,
are hardly worried at all about the national origins of the members of the Barça team.
4 In Spain, peñas are what the groups of fans are called.The symbolic capital of FC Barcelona in the global era 69
39% of the Catalan fans of FC Barcelona are indifferent to where the footballers in
their team come from, with only 17% preferring players born in Catalonia.
Table 5. Preferred composition of the FC Barcelona team
Followers of FC
What would you like the composition of your Followers of FC
Barcelona in
team to be like? Barcelona in Catalonia
the rest of Spain
Footballers born in Catalonia (1) 17% 13%
Catalan footballers and a few foreigners (2) 25% 10%
From all of Spain and foreigners (3) 14% 24%
Don’t care (4) 39% 42%
Don’t know/don’t answer (5) 5% 11%
Total 100% 100%
Source: ISA-2003.
The attitudes most in favour of giving the FC Barcelona team an ethnic component are
influenced by the origin of the interviewee, with the autochthonous being those who
most favour an “ethnic” team (54%). However, even in those cases, those who opt for
a “plural” or “multinational” team register a high percentage (44%).
Table 6. Preferred composition of the FC Barcelona team
“Ethnic” “Plural” Don’t know/
What would you like the composition of
team team don’t answer Total
your team to be like?
(1 + 2) (3 + 4) (5)
Total 42% 53% 5% 100%
Autochthonous 54% 44% 2% 100%
First generation 27% 64% 9% 100%
Son of a mixed couple 33% 65% 2% 100%
Foreigners 37% 53% 10% 100%
Source: ISA-2003. Base: fans of FC Barcelona in Catalonia.
Discussion and conclusions
FC Barcelona has traditionally been a sports entity in which there have simultaneously
co-existed feelings of national identification with orientations of integration and global
openness. This apparent paradox, which some authors have defined as “cosmopolitan
nationalism” (Foer, 2004, 171), more than anything shows the way FC Barcelona can
be considered a “glocalized” phenomenon, according to the meaning given to this term
by Roland Robertson and which makes it possible to explain how “the local” is social-
ly constructed with reference to globalization processes (Robertson, 1995, 41). This
article has examined whether FC Barcelona conserves the symbolic capital that char-
acterized it historically, in the current context of the intensification of globalization
and the transformation of European football.70 Ramón Llopis Goig
The analysis of the available data reveals that the internationalization of FC
Barcelona has not harmed its capacity to attract followers or its capacity for identitary
adscription. In recent years, the number of members and peñas has continued to grow.
The club continues to be a symbol of Catalonia, and its fans are indifferent to the
nationality of the members of the team. In this way, a “glocal” dynamic is activated,
which shows how the trans-nationalization of the club, far from eradicating its local
dimension, reinforces it.
One theoretical explanation for this identitary continuity could reside in the fact
that what gives a sports act its symbolic power is not the component of local or
national identification, but rather the athletic confrontation, the structured competition
following certain rules, which requires an outcome in which there is a winner and,
therefore, a loser. These components of the sports activity would facilitate the emo-
tional connection in such a way that professional sport, as a rite that ties and enchants,
would not be threatened by the geographical mobility of the players that sustains it
(García Ferrando, 2003, 640).
On the other hand, the local connection is reinforced by the fact that the captain of
the team is someone who represents the prototypical “local player” and personifies the
qualities of the club itself: a player formed in the ranks (La Masia) and strongly
identified with the club. This is what occurred with the former captain Josep Guar-
diola, and occurs now with the current captain Carles Puyol. These footballers anchor
the local connection, while the club engages in contracting foreign players. This is one
more example of what could be considered “cultural globalization” (Giulianotti &
Robertson, 2004, 553). In this way, what seems contradictory becomes possible: the
internationalization of a club like FC Barcelona co-exists with feelings of national
identification. This fact was recognized by the president of FC Barcelona himself, Joan
Laporta, in a recent interview:
About the possible problem of maintaining the identity of the club
within this globalized world, Barça should not have difficulties. Barça
is a very important institution in Catalonia, and in this sense, as was
stated in another era, it is the club of Catalonia (Murillo & Murillo,
2005, 340).
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Ramon Llopis Goig is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Valencia (Spain).
His substantive research interests include gender issues, racism, national identity, mass media,
consumption and globalization in sport, with a particular emphasis on football.
(contact: Ramon.Llopis@uv.es)You can also read
