Barcelona in the strange and symbolic eye of a storm over Catalonia | Sid Lowe

Oct 02, 2017

Barcelona’s nuanced identification with Catalonia is part of what gives the club an explicitly socio-political dimension. And that meant this was always going to be more than a match … even if in the end it was less than one

At every Camp Nou game for almost six years now, chants for Catalan independence have gone up when the clock reaches 17 minutes and 14 seconds, commemorating the year the city fell to Felipe V, but not this time – not on the day they were perhaps closer to independence than ever before. This time, Europe’s largest stadium was silent. No fans could be heard, only footballers. Occasionally, the referee’s whistle rang out or somebody clapped yet there were no chants, no songs and no one to sing them. At the side of the pitch where Barcelona played Las Palmas, stewards in orange bibs lined up to keep an eye on stands that had no one in them. Ninety-eight thousand seats sat empty; barely a couple of hundred people were there, and many of those wished they weren’t.

It was late Sunday morning when Barcelona’s international defender Gerard Piqué voted in the referendum on independence called by the Catalan government and declared illegal by the Spanish government and the constitutional courts. He, like many others, had insisted he would vote anyway so he had done, shaking hands with staff at the polling station, smiling and setting off for the stadium. But while that scene was repeated in many places it wasn’t the case everywhere and by the time he left the Camp Nou seven hours later, there were tears in his eyes. So much had happened and so much more could still happen, a future uncertain and scary. Barcelona had won 3-0 but Piqué called it the worst day of his career and the worst thing the state had done in 50 years.

98,000 empty seats. And a game that feels empty too. pic.twitter.com/B1aSGK3JIY

Tags: Barcelona Catalonia European club football Football La Liga Las Palmas Sport