FC Barcelona has once again taken part in the traditional floral tribute at the monument to Rafael Casanova to mark the National Day of Catalonia. President Joan Laporta led a broad institutional and sporting delegation from the Club at the event held in Barcelona on Thursday, keeping alive Barça’s historic ties with the country, its language, its culture and its freedoms.

Alongside president Joan Laporta were Rafael Yuste, first vice-president for the Sporting Area; Elena Fort, vice-president for the Institutional Area, and board members Carme Hortalà, Josep Ignasi Macià, Jaume Santiveri, Joan Solé, Miquel Camps, Xavier Barniol and Carles Ayats, as well as Jordi Casals, president of Barça Atlètic.

Representation from across the Club

The sporting side of the Club was once again strongly represented at the commemoration. Fermín López attended on behalf of the men’s first football team, while the women’s football team was represented by coach Pere Romeu and captain Patri Guijarro.

Representatives from the professional sections were also in attendance. Basketball was represented by ambassador Audie Norris and Barça Atlètic players Jan Cerdán and Jakob Siftar. Handball was represented by sporting coordinator Joan Marin and player Oriol San Felipe. In futsal, the delegation included sporting coordinator Jordi Torras, coach Javi Rodríguez and captain Dídac Plana, while roller hockey was represented by sporting coordinator Gaby Cairo, coach Ricard Ares and captain Ignacio Alabart.

The event also featured players from the boys’ and girls’ youth football teams, representatives of Barça Genuine and members of the Agrupació de Veterans del FC Barcelona, underlining the cross-Club nature of a commemoration involving the institution as a whole.

Joan Laporta: “FC Barcelona has deeply Catalan roots”

Following the floral tribute, president Joan Laporta highlighted the Club’s historic commitment to Catalonia and democratic values, recalling that this bond forms part of the very nature of FC Barcelona.

“In the defence of our language, our culture and our individual and collective freedoms, you will always find the Board of Directors that I have the honour of presiding over”, said the president.

Laporta linked this commitment to one of the expressions that best defines the uniqueness of the institution: “FC Barcelona has deeply Catalan roots, and that is what gives meaning to ‘més que un club’.”

More than a century of commitment to Catalonia and Catalan

FC Barcelona’s participation in the Diada this year forms part of a series of initiatives promoted by the Club and the FC Barcelona Foundation to champion and promote the use of Catalan and to recall the institution’s historic ties with Catalonia.

To mark the Onze de Setembre, FC Barcelona and its Foundation have produced a video looking back at some of the most significant moments in this relationship, from the early years of the 20th century to the present day.

The story begins in 1910, when the four red stripes of the senyera appeared on the Barça crest for the first time. In 1916, minutes from a Board of Directors meeting were written in Catalan for the first time and, two years later, in 1918, Catalan became the official language of FC Barcelona. In 1919, the Club took part in the commemoration of the Onze de Setembre for the first time.

This commitment was also maintained during the years when the Catalan language was persecuted and pushed out of public life. One of the episodes recalled in the video took place in 1972, during the Franco dictatorship, when a message in Catalan was heard over the Camp Nou public-address system for the first time, announcing that a lost child had been found at the Stadium.

With the restoration of democratic freedoms, Barça once again played a prominent role in the normalisation and public promotion of Catalan, a bond the Club continues to uphold today as an inseparable part of its identity.

‘Parla blaugrana, parla català’

This commitment is also reflected in current initiatives. This same week, FC Barcelona launched the “Parla blaugrana, parla català” campaign, an initiative that champions the language as one of the Club’s defining elements and as a tool for integration, coexistence and community.

The campaign places particular emphasis on making the use of Catalan a natural part of life for athletes and for people who join Barça from other countries, presenting the language not as a barrier but as a shared reality that they too can make their own.

Coinciding with the National Day of Catalonia, the Club thus continues a tradition spanning more than a century in which Catalan identity, language and culture have formed part of how Barça understands itself and presents itself to the world.

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