The country is so stunned, so anesthetized, that football once again occupies its rightful place as an outlet for collective passions, so tamed since the defeat of the Partido Proceso (Procession Process). Banks and large corporations are back, their blackmail fulfilled; the sociovergence is slowly returning, with a single administrator, the PSC (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party). And the eternal duel between Barça and Madrid returns to channel a sentiment that has no mainstream political expression. A diffuse, globalized Catalanism hides behind the celebration of Barça's goals, and is also expressed in the truce with the eternal rival, the ministerial team full of galacticos. The Cularada no longer calls the 17:14 minute, but they enjoy chanting in Catalan and projecting a more manageable difference than the complex amalgam of loyalties that constitutes today's Catalonia. Football functions as a funnel or a still where a self-referential, real, and vibrant elixir is distilled, but politically innocuous, as it has always been, except during the decade of the Revolution.
All of this is the same thing that normal countries express through their national teams. If things don't change much, Barça is the closest thing we'll ever have to a Catalan national team, and I understand the fans of Espanyol, Girona, or Nàstic who find this approach simplistic, but the country is so tightly held, so unstitched, and so fractured as a collective, that it wouldn't be prudent to part with a brand that neither politics, culture, nor economics can do. We exist through Barça, for better or worse. And this is a risk, because if the ball doesn't go in, the whole country suffers; but the fact is that there isn't much else left in the storehouse of Catalan identity, apart from bad temper, an autonomous region with an opiate vocation, and its own culture that fights battles worthily despite the enemy's obsession with marginalizing it.
Barça isn't the unarmed army Vázquez Montalbán praised, because the Catalans prefer a Champions League title to independence. But if Barça wins the Clásico, many people will have an identity orgasm, and a Catalanism half-superficial, half-terrestrial, intense but ephemeral hatred against Madrid and the Real Madrid-loving Spain will be revived, just as on Sant Jordi (Saint George's Day)—one day is one day—more books are sold in Catalan than in Spanish. But we need Madrid, Madrid, to feel who we are, which proves that football is also an instrument of Hispanic unity, perhaps the only important one, along with the AVE (High Speed Train).
Placing the destiny and essence of the country in a football team isn't a good idea, but in a world no longer structured around solid cultural realities, but rather around symbols and icons, it's good to take advantage of any spark of collective sentiment, of Catalan identity, even if it's frivolous, vague, perhaps even fictitious. Winning the Clásico against Madrid, like whistling the Spanish anthem in front of the king, is a placebo. But if these communal expressions endure, it's because behind them lies a certain glow, a past, a steadfast connection with the land and the people around us, without which it's impossible to consider more ambitious and tangible milestones. They are weak, intermittent expressions, but they have a great advantage: they cannot be repealed, outlawed, or censored by those in power. When the PSC says that, thanks to Article 155, Catalonia has returned, the classic response is that there is another Catalonia that is always there, one that is pre-constitutional and rebellious, even if at the present time it has to be influenced by the pressures of Lamine Yamal.
