Throughout its history, FC Barcelona has become one of the most important clubs in the world achieving a large number of titles in the last 30 years. It is one of the clubs that generates the most income on the entire planet and its importance on a social level is enormous for everything it represents in Catalonia.
On this day 125 years ago, FC Barcelona was born. In 1898, the Swiss Joan Gamper arrived in the city of Barcelona for work reasons and in 1899 he decided to make a call through the magazine Los Deportes to form a football club. (which would become the current Barça). On November 29 of the same year 1899, Gamper and eleven other men (known as the 12 apostles): Otto Kunzle (Swiss), Walter Wild (Swiss), brothers John Parsons and William Parsons (English), Otto Maier (German), and Lluís d’Ossó, Bartomeu Terradas , Enric Ducal, Pere Cabot, Carles Pujol and Josep Llobet (Catalans) They meet at the Solé Gymnasium to form an association that will bear the name and coat of arms of the city: the Football Club Barcelona.
This is how the culé team got started, which has grown over the years thanks to having many of the great figures in the history of football: Kubala, Cruyff, Maradona, Ronaldinho, Messi… Many know the team’s exploits but perhaps are unaware of the importance of its symbols.
This is the story through his shield:
City Symbol
The first shield, It was created with the intention of paying tribute to the city of Barcelona. At the assembly held on December 12, 1899, the design of the shield that would identify the Club was approved. For this reason, the city’s shield was adopted surrounded by the name of “Foot-Ball Club Barcelona”and the year of foundation (1899). It was the shield of the city of Barcelona, tiled with four quarters. Above it was a crown and a bat, and it was surrounded by two branches, one of laurel and the other of a palm tree. It was a way of expressing, from the beginning, the club’s connection with the city where it was born.
The antecedent of the current
In 1910 it was decided that instead of displaying the city’s emblem, the Club should have its own shield. For this reason, a meeting was held to decide the shape of the shield in question. Following this meeting, there were many discussions and disagreements. The atmosphere was so charged, and the discussions so heated, that at one point Don Lluís D’Ossó He exclaimed indignantly “Aixo is a pot” (this is a pot). So Joan Gamper Unconsciously, that word guided him and gave him an idea of what the shield could be like, so he traced the pot-shaped drawing and embedded the previous shield. After Gamper saved the club from the deep crisis of 1908, the attempts to provide the entity with its own and differentiated shield bore fruit. In 1910, Barça called a competition open to all members who had proposals. The drawing of Santiago Femenia, who had played soccer for Internacional and Barça, and was a member of the club, won. Thus was born the shield that the club has worn since then, with few variations.
It is a shield shaped like a pot that kept the Creu de Sant Jordi and the four bars in the upper rooms, representative elements of Barcelona and Catalonia, respectively.. In the center of the shield, in a stripe, the club’s initials, FCB, appear, and at the bottom the blue and scarlet colors with a soccer ball. In short, a shield that reflected the sporting dimension and the connection of the club to the city.
The changes imposed by Franco
It should be noted that although the original shield is the one we know today, during its history it has undergone several modifications as imposed by the regime of General Franco. These modifications were the alteration of the order of the Club’s initials, having to be called Barcelona Football Club. And the suppression of Catalan signs, specifically the Senyerafrom which two bars had to be removed.
Since 1910, the changes introduced to the shield have been minimal, most of them aesthetic in nature, with small modifications to the outline of its profile. The most important are those that had to be done due to political conditions. With the establishment of the Franco regime, the initials FCB were replaced by CFB, in line with the Castilianization of the club’s name. Football has always been an ideal setting for different political systems and a skillful propaganda instrument. So happened with the establishment of the Second Republic in 1931 when many clubs lost the qualification of “Royal” in his name and the royal crown disappears from his shields and That was what Franco did given the relevance acquired by the beautiful sport. in our country. This standard It would affect clubs as important as Barça, Atlético or Athletic de Bilbao.
Since the beginning of football in our country names came up like Sports Club, Sporting Club, Racing Club, Athletic Club, Recreation Club either Football Club who were accompanied by the locality they represented. The Franco regime wanted to put an end to this and adapt football to the “language of the empire.” not “out of a petty feeling of xenophobia, but out of respect for what is dearly ours, such as language,” according to the decree signed by Serrano Suñer in 1940.
Thus, by virtue of this new rule, teams such as Athletic de Bilbao and Athletic de Madrid were renamed Atlético de Bilbao and Atlético de Madrid (although at that time, after its merger with Aviación, the Madrid team was renamed Atlético Aviación), the Sporting de Gijón was Real GijónRacing de Santander was the Real Santander or the Football Club Barcelona was called Barcelona Football Club.
The dictatorship ended the senyera
But there would be more, The dictatorship also forced the four bars of the upper quarter to be replaced, which were limited to two, and the Catalan flag was eliminated from the shield. Taking advantage of the club’s 50th anniversary events in 1949, the four bars were recovered.
The original acronyms They were not recovered until late 1974, so the shield returned to its original 1910 content.
For different reasons, the shield has undergone up to 10 changes from 1899 to 2002. In 2002with the entrance to the 21st century, FC Barcelona decided to modernize its shield and commissioned it from the designer Claret Serrahima. He finished simplifying the details of the outline, brought the Blaugrana colors closer to those worn by the team on the shirt and updated the ball.
The club, on its official website, states that the designer “opted for more stylized lines, eliminated the dots that separated the club’s initials, abbreviated the name and reduced the number of points.”
The controversial change that Bartomeu proposed
In 2018, Josep María Bartomeu tried to change the shield, but no was approved. Not even voted. The managers were booed and the proposal was withdrawn. The new design, according to the Barça club, responded to the idea of adapting to a series of changes and giving more relevance to the hallmarks such as the “senyera” and more importance to the ball. But what outraged fans the most was the removal of the acronym FCB of the shield. “Removing the letters FCB from the shield is comparable to an amputation”, argued the delegates. Although even Gerard Piqué was in favor of the change, the project was finally withdrawn. Shouting “we want to vote” the partners denied the proposal which, later, was withdrawn by the Junta to avoid what would have been a historic defeat.