Friday should have been busy amid final preparations and press conferences ahead of the biggest fixture in world football: Barcelona vs Real Madrid.


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Instead, the players of Spain’s two biggest clubs were getting ready for a rare weekend off. El Clasico has been postponed and will not take place until December.

The decision to switch the game was made after nine Catalan separatist leaders were sentenced to between nine and 13 years in prison earlier this month, leading to violent scenes amid clashes between police and protestors in Barcelona.

On the day of the sentencing of the nine politicians, for sedition and misuse of public funds, Barca released a statement showing solidarity with the leaders. Prison is not the solution, it said.

Despite the protests, the Catalan club had been keen to play the Clasico as planned on Saturday, October 26, with both Barca and Madrid against La Liga’s proposal to switch the match to the Santiago Bernabeu.

It was then decided by La Liga, in co-ordination with the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), that the game would take place on a later date and the two clubs were asked when they would want that to be.

Both Barca and Madrid said they favoured December 18 and that has been announced as the new date for the fixture, although La Liga have since released a statement to say they prefer December 4 and will appeal.

But why was the game postponed in the first place? Why could it not have gone ahead as planned on October 26? Are security issues the real reason behind the change?

The Club’s desire was to play the Clasico at Camp Nou on the 26th, the date and time previously agreed and the Committee was informed of this in writing, Barca said in a statement after the decision to postpone the game was announced.


Ahead of that announcement, RFEF president Luis Rubiales had said: We are going to work together to resolve this as soon as possible because there are two teams, the fans, trips [booked], journalists.

And as usual, it is the fans who lose out, especially the international ones. Supporters of both clubs who have spent thousands on plane fares, hotels and match tickets, not to mention the cost of taking time off work. And even though they will be reimbursed for their tickets, how many could afford or would have the holidays available to make a long trip for a second time?

The security issue is given as the offiicial reason for the postponement, yet Espanyol’s game at home to Villarreal went ahead as normal on October 20 and three days after the Clasico was scheduled to take place, Barcelona’s league match against Valladolid at Camp Nou will be maintained as it is.

Neither of those fixtures are as politically charged as a Clasico clash, which is a match filled with tensions at the best of times, but steps could have been taken to ensure the game went ahead without any safety concerns.

The Clasico was due to kick off at 13:00 CET, hours before a peaceful protest at 17:00 and another at 19:30, which could see clashes between police and young Catalans on the streets of Barcelona.

But those clashes have largely been the result of police brutality and the feeling among many in Catalonia is that the Clasico has been moved for an altogether different reason.

Two years ago, Barca went ahead with their home game against Las Palmas at Camp Nou, but decided to play behind closed doors after confrontations on the streets when police used violence against Catalan citizens to halt a referendum vote on independence, which was considered illegal by the Spanish State.

Gerard Pique and Sergi Roberto had not wanted to play the game at all, while two Barca board members (Carles Vilarrubi and Jordi Mones) ended up resigning over the decision to go ahead, believing it went against the team’s ‘Mes que un club’ motto. Later, Pique was in tears as he spoke to the media after the match.

The rest of the squad had wanted to play, especially given the possibility of docked points, but the move upset many Catalan fans who saw the decision to do so behind closed doors as an empty gesture.

It irked supporters (in particular those that had travelled from overseas at great expense) and also angered senior figures in Spanish football and people across the country, who viewed it as political opportunism on the club’s part.

Ahead of the Champions League game at home to Inter Milan on October 2, Barca’s fans unfurled a banner in support of the Catalan leaders (yet to be sentenced at that point). “Only dictatorships jail peaceful political leaders,” it read.

Spain has not been a dictatorship since the death in 1975 of Francisco Franco, whose body was exhumed on Thursday, yet the treatment of Catalan citizens on the day of the referendum and also now harks back to a darker period of the country’s history and the nation has recently seen a rise in popularity of a far-right, nationalist political party (Vox), of which La Liga president Javier Tebas has openly admitted he is a supporter.

For Tebas, who has previously threatened Barca with expulsion from La Liga if Catalonia gains independence from Spain, the image of a packed Camp Nou baying for secession and protesting with banners and flags against a cruel State does not fit in with his vision for the nation, nor for the league.

And in El Clasico, watched in over 180 countries by more than 650 million people, those pictures would be broadcast all around the world.

Rubiales has said that the Spanish government played no part in the decision to switch the date of the Clasico, but for whoever did make the call in the end, security seems unlikely to have been the main motivation.