FC Barcelona has many heroes, but perhaps the most important in its long history did not play soccer – Josep Sunyol.
Sunyol was a very particular type of the early 20th century – a patrician lawyer, newspaper publisher, leftist agitator and the president of Barcelona's supporter-controlled football club.
In 1936, during the chaotic early days of the Spanish Civil War, Sunyol drove through the wrong checkpoint, was identified by nationalist troops and executed on the spot. He was 38 years old.
The Barcelona-born Sunyol became a popular symbol of Catalan resistance to control from Madrid. Then, as things tend to do in Catalonia, it got complicated.
Catalans recently voted to make their corner of the country fully independent. The Spanish government responded by dissolving the Catalan parliament and dismissing its president. As it has many times over the past century, Spain is tearing at the edges.
But more than half a century ago, the Barcelona soccer team became a global brand while Spain remained under dictatorship. Though born of politics – the team's motto is "Mes que un club" (More than a club) – the organization tried hard to avoid them. The 50th anniversary of Sunyol's death passed without official notice, so as not to open old national wounds.
On the 60th, a group of Catalan activists and opinion makers embarrassed the soccer club into marking the occasion. But the memorial stone spelled his name in the Spanish fashion (Sunol) rather than including the Catalan 'y', prompting Sunyol's son to publicly wash his hands of the whole thing.
Members of a group called The Friends of Sunyol covered the city in posters that read, "How to Kill a President." The man then running FC Barcelona, Jose Nunez, mistook it for a threat on his own life and barricaded himself in his house.
At their root, all sports organizations are tribal. Teams occasionally reckon with the ugly side of this Us-v-Them – violent outbursts, the odd riot.
The more invested (and thus more likely to run amok) your fans are, the more successful you are. The trick is keeping the mood in the stands at a simmer that never boils over.
FC Barcelona has managed it, just barely, for decades. Though entirely symbolic of Catalonia's ambition (every time Barca beats Real, the club has not just won, but the plutocrats in Madrid have lost), Barcelona's global image remained sunny and apolitical. For many years, the only display of the club's leftist roots was its refusal to take on a shirt sponsor.
When you think about it now – a small club born of protest, one whose members spent years being exiled or shunned by the central power, becoming arguably the most recognized sports brand in the world – it's ludicrous. You could trace back the causative line, all those European championships, a steady supply of nearly unbroken greatness from Kubala to Cruyff to Xavi to Messi, but it still doesn't make much sense.
It is, in its way, a sporting miracle. One that is in real danger now.
On the day of the recent vote, Barcelona closed the gates to the Camp Nou and played a game against Las Palmas in front of empty stands. If it was meant as a gesture of conciliation, it pleased neither side of the debate.
High-profile Catalan stars such as Gerard Pique and Pep Guardiola have spoken out in support of Catalan protesters and been shouted down as a result. On recent duty with the national team, the home crowd booed Pique.
Lionel Messi gets a local pass because he is an Argentine, but his careful silence on the matter is inevitably contrasted with another foreign-born Barca star, Johann Cruyff. Though Dutch, Cruyff became an enthusiastic separatist during his years in Spain, eventually coaching the non-FIFA-sanctioned Catalan national team.
FC Barcelona now wants it both ways – being seen to back Catalonia (the club signed on to the independence vote, saying it supported "self-determination"), while remaining aloof from the tumult that has followed.
When asked where he stood, Barcelona manager Ernesto Valverde said this week, "I have a personal opinion, but I would rather focus on sporting issues."
He added, "What I say doesn't mean anything."
Since Valverde is Spanish, but not Catalan, I think that unlikely. There's nothing he can say that will help, but whatever it is would certainly mean something.
As the political knife fight intensifies, the government and its proxies are using the soccer club as a wedge against the independence movement. La Liga president Javier Tebas has warned that if Catalonia abandons Spain, Barcelona will be expelled from the Spanish league.
A few people floated the idea that Barca might join France's Ligue 1, but Tebas brushed that possibility away, calling it "a joke."
That would leave the biggest soccer club in the world playing in a rump Catalan league full of semi-pro sides and no-hopers. There would be no more nine-figure TV deals, no more Clasico and perhaps no more Champions League. The Piques in the side might stay, but not every Spaniard on Barca is Catalan and the foreigners play there for the glamour rather than the principle. Why would they agree to become well-paid participants in a functional rec league because of a vote they were not invited to take part in?
Under those circumstances, it is very difficult to envision Barcelona's global dominance lasting much longer.
Considering the stakes, what happens to a soccer team is nowhere close to the top of Spain's current to-do list. But given that that one club has for the better part of a century emblemized their aspirations, it may be for some Catalans.
The numbers dividing the "leave" and "stay" sides are small – just a few points either way. How many of them are soccer fans? Most, probably.
How ironic it would be if the greatest symbol of the Catalan independence movement was, in the end, its undoing.
Cathal Kelly