In his excellent sports column in Tuesday’s El Pais, the incisive Martin Girard draws on the latest book by Alfredo Relaño to remind us how the divergent histories of Real Madrid and FC Barcelona have forged the identity of both clubs. It a subject close to my heart and I expand on it at some length in my new book La Roja: A Journey through Spanish Football which is due out very soon .
Relaño notes that Carlos Padros, the founder of Real Madrid, was abandoned by his club during the Franco years , died a destitute man, with not one club official turning up at his burial. While Padros was imprisoned by anti-Franco forces during the Spanish Civil War and was subjected to a ‘mock’ execution, simply because he was a one-time businessman, he seems to have also been discriminated against again after the war because he was not as pro-regime as Real Madrid’s president President Santiago Bernabeu, and had been born in Catalonia.
By comparison, the founder of FC Barcelona, Hans Gamper, while of Swiss origin, identified his club closely with Catalonia and democracy from the outset, to the point that he had to briefly go into exile during the dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera when the Madrid government denied him any access to his club.
Gamper ended up committing suicide after the Great Depression. While this appears to have been the reason why his name never graced a stadium , the club did name a trophy after him and to this day remains honoured as one FC Barcelona’s founding fathers in the official museum and history.
“The difference in which Padros and Gamper have been treated reflects the different ways that each club sees itself, “reflects Relaño , “While Madrid only values its victories, Barca has a more profound and sentimental relationship with itself, its love goes beyond any sense of achievement.”
I was thinking on this last night watching Real Madrid’s graceless performance against Villareal that included Mourinho and two of his players getting red cards. The expulsions that involved Mourinho putting on a particularly graceless performance, came in the final stages of a game that had Real Madrid at 1-1 and risking a defeat that would have narrowed even more the lead it has over Barca in La Liga.
Once again Mourinho showed, as he did last season, that while he may have come to personify the sharper edge of a culture that has driven Real Madrid to great trophies in the past, he is also a bad loser. Contrast this with Mourinho’s nemesis Pep Guardiola who has been telling the media, without any bitterness, for days that he doesn’t expect to win La Liga while his team shows no signs of losing its reputation as the best in the world.
Well I had a dream him about Guardiola the other day. Pep was in the middle of the Bernabeu surrounded by screaming Mourinhos and Ultra Surs shouting abuse when he stood his ground and made a speech that almost seemed to paraphrase Unamuno’s defiant lecture in Salamanca at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. “You may win, because you have and know how to use more than enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince, you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: reason and right in the struggle. I consider it futile to exhort you to be noble and to play a football others can love and respect.”
