Title:
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Articulating an identity : the transformation and globalisation of Barcelona Football Club in the Catalan media
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The following thesis represents research exploring the rhetoric of nationalism
generated by the sporting arena in contemporary Spain and Catalonia. A sporting
institution, FC Barcelona, is shown to have attained an almost mythical status as a
symbol of regional identity where the stadium and club may be seen as a metaphor for
the imagined nation. Support for the club is perceived as part of a broader movement
of cultural resistance, maintained and re-invented through historical events, both real
and imagined. The thesis represents an analysis, both empirical and theoretical, of the
media through which football is disseminated, with a particular focus upon those
narratives which serve to construct a sporting institution's elevated symbolic status in
the nation's popular memory. Such an examination has enabled the extraction of
themes that reflect regional and national identifies as well as national obsessions and
invented traditions. Sport is understood as part of a broader cultural identity under
transformation and the effects of post-modernism, post-nationalism and globalisation
upon Catalanism as a whole. I shall focus upon three distinct periods since the
Transition to Democracy that I feel illustrate perfectly these processes and effects.
The three periods to be analysed in three different chapters are firstly; the early
Transition to Democracy 1976; then 1992 when an increasingly autonomous
Catalonia and successful FC Barcelona utilise sporting achievement and event hosting
to locate the nation in a European and post-national context. And finally we consider
the contemporary FC Barcelona and its context in a truly globalised setting. Each
chapter begins with a degree of contextualisation and an explanation of the historical
background to the period, followed by close readings of the text available in the
newspaper at that time.
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