Francos impact on FC Barcelona and Catalonia

Hi there,

I'm currently doing a dissertation project on how Francos regime sparked the rivalry between Barcelona and Real Madrid. I would be interested to know everyones thoughts on the topic. Has the meaning of the rivalry changed in its political and cultural nature? Is Catalan nationalism as prevalent as the 20th century? How do you view Franco in terms of the way he treated the Catalan population forcing them to accept his polcies of anti-catalanism?

Feel free to discuss and your opinions would be much appreciated

Thanks,

Jason

Id say the whole di stefano saga didn help with the rivalry

I'd say read Sid Lowe's 'Fear and Loathing in La Liga' if you want to get a nice view of both sides for the last 100 years. And if you are interested in Francoism in general, I'd say have a look at his book 'Catholicism, War and the Foundation of Francoism', which I will personally start reading very soon.

My take on things as it stands today: the narrative is always skewed in the storyteller's favour, where FC Barcelona extensively victimises itself and Catalonia while making Real Madrid and the city of Madrid the big villains. But please don't think we weren't wrong ourselves, in the sense that we now seem happy to use certain arguments to hide our own faults. We fucked up the Di Stefano transfer ourselves because we did not want to pay Millionarios, the team he was loaned out to by his own club with which we had an agreement. Maybe we were rightfully sticking to what we knew was fair, but we should've know better. The stubbornness and ineptness of the Barcelona directors was directly responsible for giving Real Madrid the biggest player they ever had and everything they now build their world-wide image on.