FC Barcelona

What has become one of the most glamorous of all football clubs, residing in the great soccer temple of Camp Nou, all began with a few bored Englishmen getting up a game on turnip fields on the outskirts of Barcelona. The locals were intrigued and began to play too, encouraged by the news from the city’s hygienists that football was good therapy for the ills caused by the Industrial Revolution. Then they formed clubs, as expats do: the Hispania Football Club and the Barcelona Football Club, or Barça, founded in 1899 by English, Swiss and local footballers.

Hispania (now Espanyol) was supported mainly by pro-Spain or national unity residents of Barcelona (nicknamed the periquitos), but early on Barça became linked with Catalan nationalism. Immigrant workers were fairly impervious to the charms of the choral societies and the Renaixença of Catalan verse, but most of them adored football, and Barça became the prime vehicle for them to identify with the Catalan cause—hence its famous motto 'Més que un club' (More than a club).