Pegasus at the Bernabéu, by Joan Cañete Bayle


I don’t know if, as Miguel de Unamuno said, Catalans lose us aesthetics, but I think it is evident that to the long-suffering Barça fans, yes. The culé, of the miracles of Real Madrid in the Champions League at the Bernabéu, does not fit in his head that they happen and their stubborn repetition, but above all what revolts him is that, in addition, the madridistas enjoy winning like this. The culé is embittered by the injustice that he wins who least deserves it: who has less possession, who has been ahead in the tie for less time, who has best flirted with chance, who has played the ugliest and toughest, who least respects the complexity and beauty of the game, who benefits from arbitrations.

In this world view, Pep Guardiola can only be a culé and José Mourinho was born to play for Madrid, hence that storm of classics from a decade ago ended as it did. The decisive goal in the ninety-and-first minute is, above all, an injustice, as is the fact that Messi has won far fewer Champions Leagues than he deserves given his status as the best player in history. That the goals are not deserved, but they are scoredis an ugly reality, one of those that needs to be swept under the rug and is dismissed with contempt: results-oriented, you are results-oriented.

Vazquez Montalban

True to his status army of an unarmed country, Barça is the mirror of Catalanism and Catalan nationalism. “When Barcelona won a football match against Real Madrid, considered the government team, Catalonia made up for all the civil wars it has lost since the 17th century. And when Barcelona lost against Real Madrid, Catalonia ratified its metaphysical condition as a losing people, an unfortunate people, subjected to the yoke of the centralist hordes”, which Manuel Vázquez Montalbán wrote in his famous article Barça: the army of an unarmed country. Seeing Madrid win for Europe the way they win is vinegar in the wounds, not only for the victory per se, but because it is unfair. And injustice, oh, it revolts us, the Catalans.

It happens these days with the scandal of espionage with Pegasus to figures of independenceeither. There is a moral indignation in the forums of the pure-blooded independence movement at the revelations, summed up in a hashtag that Carles Puigdemont promoted yesterday: #aneualamerda. “Go to hell all of you who have violated our lives and those of our families. Miserable those who do it and those who justify it,” tweeted the former president of the Generalitat. Puigdemont affirms that “with these people” (he does not clarify if the spies, the Government or the Spaniards, in general) the independence movement only has to sit down to decide the “terms of separation & rdquor ;. But this fact, sitting down to decide the terms of separation, did not happen in 2017, after the 1-O referendum; It didn’t happen in 2019, after the sentencing of the ‘procés’ leaders, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen now. It does not matter the capacity for mobilization, the high human and social price paid by 1-O, the evident (and outrageous) disproportion of the criminal reaction of the State to the events of 2017: in a soccer simile, the independence movement has been playing at the Bernabéu for years, trapped in the ninety-and-minute minute, losing relentlessly and complaining bitterly about the unfairness of the defeats. But the goals fall on the other side, one after another.

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The firm denunciation of the violation of the fundamental rights of the Catalan spies (Spanish citizens with the same rights as the rest, something that certain sectors of Spanish justice, politics and journalism have forgotten for years) is more than justified. The political use of the scandal to return the Catalan problem to the center of the agenda is understandable, like a political strategy manual. The personal indignation of those spied upon knowing that their privacy was violated is understandable and they deserve support in their demand for explanations and purging of responsibilities. But in the autonomous community of CESICAT, the so-called Catalan CNI, the ripping of moral clothes by espionage sound overacted. And the pain, the internal tear, due to the injustice of perfidious Spain years, decades ago, which does not lead Catalonia anywhere other than a self-indulgent moral superiority of internal consumption for a group of faithful who feed off each other. And, as Barça well knows, that’s the perfect state of mind to salvage the season by winning from time to time at the Bernabéu.

Madrid does not always win so much in the same way, just by luck. And when something happens many times and is not attributable to chance, it ceases to be an injustice and becomes a consequence.


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