Between Barcelona and Real Madrid, a war of memories with the Franco regime as a background

The two great rivals in Spanish football have accused each other of being a “Franco club”. Barcelona and Real Madrid exchanged accusations in the media on Monday April 17 about their alleged roles during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, between 1939 and 1975.

The controversy has its origin in the Negreira case, named after the former Spanish referee José María Enríquez Negreira. Barça has been in chaos since the Spanish media revealed in early February suspicious payments to companies owned by this man.

The revelations led the Spanish courts to charge the Catalan club and its former presidents Josep Maria Bartomeu (2014-2020) and Sandro Rosell (2010-2014) in mid-March for “corruption between individuals in the sports field”, “prevarication” and “false commercial document”.

According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the Catalan club paid more than 7.3 million euros to José María Enríquez Negreira between 2001 and 2018 in exchange for advice on arbitration matters. The transfers would have ended when the referee left his position in the Spanish Arbitration Technical Committee.

But this Monday, April 17, for the first time since the controversy began, Barcelona president Joan Laporta denied that the club had tried to cheat. The Blaugrana president denounced an “orchestrated campaign to destroy Barcelona’s reputation” and openly criticized Real Madrid, which he described as a “club of General Franco’s regime.”

This criticism is often used by detractors of Madrid, historically considered the club of power, money and Franco, while Barcelona is usually linked to the Catalan independence movement.

In response, the Madrid club responded with a four-minute video posted on social networks in which it points out Barça’s political involvement during the dictatorship. Specifically, the meringues assure that Barcelona’s stadium, the Camp Nou, “was inaugurated by Franco’s general minister, José Solís Ruiz”, that “Barça gave Franco the insignia”, that he even “named him honorary member in 1965” and that he “decorated him three times.

“Cercanías” to Francoism

“It’s not about the two clubs being fundamentally Francoist,” says Jean-Baptiste Guégan, consultant and professor of sports geopolitics. “The Franco regime was an authoritarian regime in which they repressed you if you did not respect the established framework, it was not a democracy in which you could make yourself heard freely,” he commented.

The specialist clarifies that he speaks of “proximities” with the Franco regime on both sides. “Everything that Real Madrid says in its video is true, but the club does not affirm anything, it simply makes observations with images that we have never seen,” added Guégan.

The merengue club did not comment on the video, they opted to use archive images (such as the inauguration of the Camp Nou in 1957), press clippings, photos from the time, including one of Barça players making the fascist salute, and some texts who remember different periods in which Barcelona had to deal with Franco.

Real Madrid also refers to the differences in its history with Barça during the Franco regime, suggesting that this period would have been more profitable for the Catalan club in sporting terms. He affirms that Barcelona won eight championships and nine Spanish Cups between 1939 and 1975, adding that “with Franco, it took Real Madrid 15 years to win the League”. But the Madrid club did not mention that it won fourteen championships and six Spanish Cups in the same period.

“It’s not the Franco team,” said María Llombart Huesca, a historian and specialist in Catalonia who teaches at the University of Paris. “This video (of the Madrid club) is almost funny, because everyone knows that the team that supported Francoism was Real Madrid,” she added.

The historian recounts that Santiago Bernabéu, president of the club between 1943 and 1978 and who is honored by the name of the stadium where Real Madrid plays, “was friends with the military and people from the regime.” The media ‘So Foot’ also mentions a “close relationship with the Government” and affirms that Bernabeu “participated in the conflict in the ranks of the Francoist Army” during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).

The “own goal” of Barcelona

María Llombart Huesca commented on an “intervention by the Franco regime” in the transfer of the Argentine player Alfredo di Stéfano to Real Madrid in 1953. The player who became a merengue legend, scored 418 goals in 510 official matches, had initially signed for the Barcelona before finally becoming a Real Madrid player after a financial conflict.

It was this failure of Barça to recruit the best player in the world at the time that led to “Catalan remorse” that “mixed with frustration” gave rise to the “phantom of an intervention by the Francoist authorities in favor of the ‘ club of the regime'”, he explained to ‘Les Cahiers du football’.

Both on the Madrid side and on the Barcelona side, the “closeness” to the regime seems historically proven, in a context of systemic repression of opponents of Francoism.

But the return to the public stage of this dark period in Spain’s history is not just a commemorative battle between the country’s two biggest soccer clubs. It also seems to be a distraction strategy on the part of the Barcelona president, according to Guégan.

“Barça uses Real as a media backfire to avoid focusing on its alleged case of corruption and arbitration subordination (the Negreira case, editorial note). When it shakes the scarecrow of Francoism and Real, it is a communication strategy”, ensures.

According to the specialist, it is a problematic choice, in addition to this legal case, Barça is now involved in a controversy “that will last and damage the image of both clubs.” “The reaction could be detrimental for Barcelona. You could say it’s an own goal,” he concludes.

This article was adapted from its original in French.