Levi-Strauss on Religion

‘El Clasico’ and the demise of tradition in Spanish club football: perspectives on shifting patterns of cultural identity

“…It also became the implicit site of oppositional politics, particularly during the latter years of the Franco Regime when Supporting Barca had been one of the only ways to show outward hostility towards him. 6 Particularly, in Catalonia and the Basque Country, football came to constitute the paradoxes, complexities and tensions between the suppressed aspirations of autonomy and separateness whilst being utilized and manipulated to construct consensus around homogenous nationhood. The matches between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona in this period overtly and covertly demonstrated these paradoxes.…”

“…Since 1982, Catalanism, in its myriad forms, has become more certain of its cultural and political identity, as autonomy has become more firmly established, so that … defence of identity is a largely uncontested part of mainstream politics. 9 FC Barcelona has gradually become the natural embodiment of Catalonia itself, so that when the team took the field against FC Valencia in February 2012, nine players from the starting 11 emerged from the club's Cantera System. In this sense, FC Barcelona is the agent and symbol of Catalonia to the global football public.…”

“…22 In the transition period, football was not immune from the changes sweeping across Spanish society; Montalban has further claimed that it played a decisive role in the process by both opening up democratic practices within the organizational structures of the clubs themselves, so that FC Barcelona moved towards a system of universal suffrage in the election of its president and other senior officials during the latter years of the regime and in the transition period, and in the ability of the game to define and reflect resurgent regionalism. These initially tentative breaks with the recent past were underpinned by the national, unified structure the league encompassed.…”