Both National Dissonance: The Copa del Rey Soccer Final as a Site of Political Performance and Fury and Failure in Spanish Football Stories of the 1960s by Adam Winkel provide tremendous commentary on the intersection on politics and fandom in Spanish Soccer. Admittingly this is a topic that is of particular interest to me this semester as my research topic focuses on the political power/role of soccer in Catalunya.
The role of soccer as a unifying (or a separating) power – both nationally or subnationally, as described in National Dissonance, comments how the Copa Del Rey tournament “has been a story that Spain has told about itself as ‘a single nation with the strong national identity or a conglomerate of nations with a variety of cultural identities.’”
The Copa Del Rey is a political tool on both ends of the spectrum – the fans and the government. The tournament itself holding many different names such as; Copa de S. M. El Rey de España, Copa de S.E. el Presidente de la República, Torneo Nacional de Fútbol, y Copa de S.E. el Generalísmo, shows that political figures (including Franco) have understood the importance of the sport as a political tool. Fans historically have also used these games as a their own medium by which to express their political views. Fans have taken to the stands across the history of the tournament to express their political views – in connection to my topic for the semester some Barca fans (located in Catalunya) whistle and jeer at the Spanish national anthem as a sign of protest for their independence.
This connect hand-in-hand with Fury and Failure and the commentary it makes on the literature of the game. There are two quotes that I find impactful from this reading. “When football is written about it is already over, and when the article is read there is no longer any value in the match; all that exists is the value of the writing” a quote from Karl Ove Knausgaard and “it falls to literature, no matter how tentatively, to present the reader with the sentimental aspects of sport and sport fandom” highlight the importance of literature in this context. Both of these quotes outline the space that sports literature holds in the broader context of sport in Spanish society. This literature is inherently political and shapes the perspective of soccer in society – these topics in turn influence the greater political sentiment/power that soccer holds in spanish society. I really enjoyed these two readings.
No matter how you cut it, soccer in Spain was, is, and will continue to be a political tool.
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