The legacy of Joaquim Maria Puyal

BarcelonaOn September 5, 1976, Joaquim Maria Puyal made the first broadcast in Catalan of a Barça match on Ràdio Barcelona. It was a Barça - Las Palmas game at the Camp Nou and the 'blaugranes' comfortably defeated the Canary Islands team 4-0, with two goals from Johan Cruyff, one from Manolo Clares, and one from Juan Carlos Heredia. Viewed from today, it is hard to imagine the impact that the Catalan-language broadcast must have had at that moment, even for Catalan speakers. I am sure that many years had to pass before the majority of Catalan speakers became accustomed to hearing their own language in spheres that had until then been reserved for Spanish, and that at first, more than one person must have turned up their nose or thought that it would be an experiment with no future.

Part of the operation's success is the result of Puyal's special linguistic sensitivity and communicative talent, as he had to invent a new language, but he was not starting from scratch either. When Puyal said "orsai" (offside) or "hand" (handball), he had the precedent of the Catalan press of the 1930s, which was full of anglicisms. In fact, in the 1920s, there was a publication that was called precisely that, Orsai. Its legacy, however, goes much further. I would dare to say that Puyal imposed a style of narration different from that of the networks based in Madrid, less strident and more elegant, surely more restrained, which later became the canon for sports broadcasts on Catalan radio. A way of doing things that means we all rightly remember those magical moments when he would let out all his emotion ("Urruti, I love you!" or "Pizzi, you're a legend!") because they broke the norm, and in this way, they became fixed in the collective memory.