Last Sunday the Spanish football team won the European Football Championship with a 1-0 victory over Germany, and what a match they had. A combination of technical flair, accurate passing and superb pace ensured a convincing victory for the Spaniards. Naturally, jubilations followed both on the pitch and all over Spain, fans waving flags adorned with the black silhouetted image of a bull, nowadays considered an unofficial symbol of Spain. The whole affair was depicted as a true Spanish football fiesta around the world.
But is there more to these apparent celebrations of national unity than meets the eye? While watching the ceremony after the match I saw Sergio Ramos, the Spanish defender, wrapped in the green-and-white flag of Andalusia, his native region, instead of draping himself in the Spanish flags, like most of his team mates. It was remarkable to notice that none of the other ‘regional players’ exhibited their allegiances. There were no symbols on display for players such as the Catalonian Cesc Fàbregas or Xabi Alonso, the only Basque in the team. Indeed, it could be speculated that such a move may have been heavily criticised in the Spanish national press and condemned as being separatist.
I am interested to find out more about the connections between nationalism and football in general, and the complexities of Spanish regional identities and football clubs in particular. It is well documented in the media that football attracts all levels of support, ranging from seemingly innocent patriotism to violent hooliganism. I start my search by looking for ‘football’ and ‘nationalism’ to get a background for the theme, and indeed the results are interesting. An evaluation of football and national identity as an answer to globalization is presented in ‘Imagined Communities in the Global Game: Soccer and the Development of Dutch National Identity’ (Lechner, Frank, 2007). This article, even though concerning the Netherlands, draws on the ideas of Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities, viewing the nation as a social construct imagined by its members. Other topics touched upon by various articles include patriotism, racism, collective belonging and symbolism, to name just a few.
In order to retrieve more relevant results, I limit my searching to Spain, on the lookout for publications dealing with the Spanish context in particular. I find two relevant books: Ángel Bahamonde’s El Real Madrid en la historia de España (Editorial Taurus, 2002) and another in Catalan by Jordi Salvador Duch, Futbol, metàfora d’una guerra freda. Estudi antropològic del Barça (Editorial Proa, 2005), which offers an anthropological analysis of FC Barcelona during the Cold War. The two teams in question are not only bitter rivals in football but share a highly politicized past. During Franco’s dictatorship, Real Madrid were the chosen team of the Generalísimo and Barca (as FC Barcelona is known by its fans) came to symbolise resistance to the regime as well as the fight for Catalan autonomy.
To make sense of the multitude of identities in Spain, I decide on a different approach and look for information on ‘regionalism’, ‘identity’ and ‘Spain’ and end up with a convenient twenty results. Many of the ‘hits’ focus on issues of language, decentralization and autonomy, ranging geographically from Galicia via Catalonia and the Basque Country to Andalusia. ‘Spanish Nationalism, Ethnic or Civic?’ an article by Diego Muro and Alejandro Quiroga (2005) caught my eye immediately. It discussed the discourse of Spanish nationalism from the 19th century to the present day and concludes by saying that ‘20th-century Spanish nationalism [is] a dialectical struggle between the centre and the periphery’. From glancing at the various articles it becomes clear that because of the matrix of identities in Spain it is nearly impossible to talk of a ‘national identity’ in any meaningful manner.
It seems to me that it is in the interest of the Spanish authorities to present a unified picture of support for the national side, and who could blame them after waiting for a victory for 44 years. It is also the case that the last time the Spanish football team was victorious, they defeated the Soviet Union 2-1 under the watchful eye of General Franco. The success was highly propagandised and branded as a triumph over communism by the right-wing regime. It is therefore understandable that there is a desire to retire political divisions to the past but to ignore the deep-seated regional identities of some parts of Spain is not likely to be successful. The beautiful game, as well as any other sport, will always be embedded in and entwined with its contemporary political climate.
Blog feed