The Early Rivalry: Barcelona and Real Madrid

The notorious and long standing rivalry between Spain’s two major teams has always been keenly felt. This came to a head, of course, during the Franco era. Barcelona, as now, was the emblematic capital of the region of Catalonia and Franco banned both the Catalan flag and its language. FC Barcelona became the only place where large groups of people could gather and speak in their native language and the claret and blue of Barcelona became a recognisable substitute for the red and yellow of Catalonia. Josep Suñol, the president at the time, was murdered by the military in 1936 and a bomb was dropped on the FC Barcelona social club in 1938. Football-wise, things probably reached their nadir in 1941 when Barcelona were ‘instructed’ to lose a match to Real Madrid. They did, in fact, lose the match by 11 goals to 1 in protest – and then saw their goalkeeper banned from football for the rest of his life.