For the second World Cup in a row, Spain’s match-winner lifting the trophy is once again a Barcelona player – from Iniesta to Ferran Torres, still a blaugrana when his goal brought Argentina down. An unbreakable link between the successes of the club and those of the national team. And yet still not enough to bring the autonomous community any closer to the country, which has long been at the centre of a bitter geopolitical dispute. Around Camp Nou, in other words, Barça always comes before Spain. And Catalonia before football. So the chance to celebrate the players who connect the two worlds has gone by the wayside in the name of the flag.
Eight of De la Fuente’s men conquered America: Joan García, Eric García, Pedri, Pau Cubarsí, Gavi, Rodri, Dani Olmo and Lamine Yamal, plus Torres, who has since moved to PSG. They were supposed to have their moment in front of the home crowd, as part of the Spanish federation’s initiative for these opening rounds of the season, taking the World Cup trophy on tour from one stadium to another across the country. Sometimes it works: Madrid, on the Atlético side, has already welcomed the Colchoneros of La Roja as heroes. Sometimes it does not: at San Mamés in Bilbao – another stronghold of the independence movement – whistles drowned out the applause.
That precedent alone should have been enough to put the Camp Nou stop on alert, scheduled for Thursday evening for Barça-Athletic – there could hardly have been a more awkward fixture. In the end, though, there will be no pasillo for the trophy. Nor for the players: the blaugrana world is still shaken by what happened in Elche last Sunday. Nothing to do with the result on the pitch, since Raphinha and his team-mates won comfortably, 5-0. But behind the scenes, at the stadium entrance, the treatment of some away supporters by local police caused quite a stir. Above all, the assault on a minor – as reported by El País – and the seizure of an Estelada: the flag of an independent Catalonia, proudly waved by the blaugrana crowd on more or less every occasion.
Compared with a few years ago, tensions around the political status of the autonomous community are less intense. But it takes very little for them to resurface with all their force: Barça has condemned the “disproportionate and violent” actions and wants to get to the bottom of what happened. The Interior Ministry is investigating too. The display of the Estelada is permitted under Spanish law, unless it incites violence or risks creating a threat to public order – a proviso that leaves room for ambiguity, especially in stadiums and amid rivalries between supporters. President Joan Laporta has therefore decided to cancel the evening in honour of the World Cup winners and turn it into a celebration of the Catalan flag: no speech on the sidelines, but a collective response from the entire blaugrana world to the events of recent days.
“There are no longer the conditions to celebrate anything, and the Spanish federation has understood that perfectly too,” Laporta explained. “Football should bring people together, not create conflicts that benefit nobody.” In other words, it could be a way of letting off steam and calming things down. Or of inflaming them further: Catalan independence groups will distribute 10,000 Estelada flags inside the stadium and are already celebrating the absence of a tribute “to the oppressors’ team”. Athletic’s sympathetic supporters are also expected to join them, with the ikurrina, the Basque flag, in tow. Spain are still world champions today, but apparently only in pieces.