Real and Barça

I sometimes explain the deep-seated rivalry between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona to chapines (who often just seem to have picked one side or the other), that it is a continuation of the Spanish Civil War by other means, or at least a continuation of the situation which took shape at the conclusion of that conflict, when Franco was consolidating his power in Madrid and clamping down on both the regionalist and anarchic tendencies of the Catalans.

But it does also seem to reference an earlier important duality in Spanish history: their most Catholic majesties Ferdinand and Isabella.

Barcelona’s medieval maritime empire, which stretched across the Med to Athens, hopping from island to island, had been absorbed into Ferdinand’s realm of Aragon. But it was his wife, the Castilian queen Isabella would strike that momentous deal with Colombus, opening up seemingly vast possibilities for treasure and trade to the West, and Catalunya found itself locked out…suddenly becalmed in an inner sea.

Frankly, the Spanish Empire which, as I pointed out in the previous post, never really brought anything like real prosperity to the home country, might have worked out a bit better if the more serious, commercially-minded Catalans had been put in charge from the get-go. They were certainly none too chuffed about the situation and along with Portugal rose up against the central yet still somehow feudal authority of Phillip IV in 1640, but only the Portuguese were able to break free.

At this stage the Catalans had fancied themselves as part of France, but after the last Spanish Habsburg had croaked in 1700, they sided with the English against the Bourbons in the War of the Spanish Succession, only to be backstabbed by us during the composition of the Treaty of Utrecht, which abolished all their rights and established Louis XIV’s grandson on the throne as Phillip V — and the new king duly constructed the Castle of Montjuïc above Barcelona in order to remind the city’s inhabitants who was going to be the boss from now on