The book that Barça didn't want to be published

BarcelonaAt the start of Sant Jordi, any bookstore is filled with boxes of the latest publishing releases. When a customer shows a photo of the cover and the clerk reads the title, We have stepped on shit, can't help but burst out laughing as he searches for this book that's just come out of the oven. "Are they messing with Barça?" he asks. Not well, although the work ended up generating controversy within the club to the point that they labeled it "unpublishable."

The author is Santi Giménez (Barcelona, ​​​​1968), an essential journalist for keeping up with Barça news who doesn't understand life without a sense of humor, a side he displays in the newsroom, in talk shows, or sipping a beer while keeping an eye on the ARO in the middle of his game. He says that the publishing house Planeta came to him with the assignment to write a book about the history of Barça with a humorous twist. "They wanted me to write a kind of essay to show how difficult it is for Barça given all the things that have happened. But I'm not a historian, nor a data freak. And history, ultimately, has already been told. So I suggested writing some fictional stories coinciding with moments when things happen to Barça." And they liked it.

He says he improvised and that, "basically," he made the proposal "to get the job done." But against all odds, they said yes. So for a year and a half, the research went hand in hand with a torrent of imagination that even he can't explain where it comes from. "I didn't know that the Bern final had coincided with Nestlé's purchase of Findus. Then I thought... what if it turns out that a Catalan who's a KGB spy and works at Nestlé proposes that fish fingers never be square because he doesn't want to be reminded of the clubs in that European Cup?" he says.

'We Stepped in Shit' includes hilarious fictions about historic Barça moments.

It's these kinds of details that made Barça wrinkle their noses, because that spy never existed; nor did the Echevarría-Parera-Associats detective agency, which was supposedly in charge of monitoring Kubala's nightlife; nor is it true that some of the members of the English band that performed the song Royal March in Les Corts in 1925 were named Hughes, Archibald, Badger, and Gascoigne; or that a medium had intervened in a RTVE program to make the spirit of Julio César Benítez appear and shed light on the darkness surrounding his death in strange circumstances before a Barça-Madrid match. All of this is made clear in the book's introduction, which breaks down what is fact and fiction in each chapter. Only in one is everything explained absolutely real, with the sole exception of having changed the names to avoid betraying the only Barça fan who on May 7, 1986, went to sleep (after a hangover) completely convinced that Barça had won the European Cup in Seville.

He has been able to experience recent history firsthand. Older things, of course, he hasn't. And he doesn't hide the fact that he would have liked to have a few drinks with Kubala and be in President Miró-Sans' office the day he rejected Barça's participation in the newly founded European Cup because he believed the Copa Catalunya would generate more box office revenue. "I wanted to be able to grab him by the ears and say, 'You donkey, you're making a mistake and you're giving us shit that we'll be dragging on for years to come,'" Giménez says of the Barça president's idea between 1953 and 1961.

The club's reasons

The book was supposed to be published under the Barça Books label, but the club put the brakes on it at the last minute. "Let it be clear that this is neither a complaint nor a controversy. Being a Barça imprint, the club must ensure that certain parameters of political and institutional correctness are met, which are evidently not met in this book. I sent the first manuscript to a committee, who returned it saying it was absolutely unacceptable due to the circumstances, I was the person to write for Barça Books. But I also think we could have avoided all this, I can tell you that too," Giménez explains.

Santi doesn't want to make too much noise about the issue and plays it down, although it's clear he didn't like the way it was done. "I found the insinuations about my 'psychological condition' a bit funny, especially from those who came. But I don't want to talk about that in public." Since the work was done, he and Planeta reached an agreement to publish the book anyway, but without the Barça umbrella.

Despite the inaccuracies, fictions, and hilarious facts that are part of the club's history, the book has an optimistic undertone. "Barça is unbreakable." Why? "Today we complain out of habit and don't give things a historical perspective. It was more apocalyptic when, in 1908, Gamper was about to dissolve Barça because it only had 30 members and some didn't pay the dues, when Primo de Rivera closed the club, when they scored 11 goals at the Bernabéu, and when you save a goal, and the opponent shoots once and scores twice. That day, and the day in Seville, many thought they would never win the European Cup. Yes, Barça has stepped on shit, and will step on more shit. It all depends on putting it into perspective and looking at it with a sense of humor, which, deep down, "is still a way of protecting oneself."