However, nationalists in both the Basque and Catalan regions continue to demand their own national soccer teams. In the former case, they want to see players from the French-Basque region eligible.
“I’m not supporting either side,” nationalist party leader Aitor Esteban said when asked in a radio interview ahead of the Spain vs. France semifinal earlier this week. “My team is the Basque national team, and neither of these sides [France or Spain] has my support because the governments of both countries knowingly prevent us from having an official national team.”
Santiago Segurola, a sports journalist and editor of a book of essays exploring soccer’s relationship to politics, describes an “Asterix village” mentality in Spain’s Basque Country, which has a population of just over two million and a passion for soccer that verges on the religious.
“The Basque Country is small, so they look for space for pitches wherever they can find it because soccer’s so important there,” he told POLITICO.
Second-division club SD Eibar’s Ipurua stadium, for example, is on the side of a mountain, built on top of the rubble left by the bombing of the city by German and Italian aircraft during the Spanish civil war.
The region’s most successful club, Athletic Bilbao, has arguably been a proxy for nationalist dreams of a Basque national team. It only signs players who have either come through its junior ranks or represented other teams in the Spanish and French Basque Country, or Navarre. (The French-born Aymeric Laporte, who plays in defense for Spain, qualified to play for the club through Basque family links.)
Despite its strict signings policy, Athletic is one of only three clubs — along with Real Madrid and FC Barcelona — never to be been relegated from the top division.
“In a globalized world where borders don’t exist, Athletic has maintained its borders,” said Segurola. “Athletic has made a virtue of this policy. This shows that soccer is more than a business.”
‘A propaganda strategy’
With its heavy reliance on Catalan and Basque players, the Spanish team poses a conundrum for nationalists from those regions: Should they support it in the World Cup?
Those who remember the febrile atmosphere in Catalonia during the height of the independence drive say support for Spain was muted. That has changed.
