BarcelonaIn 2021, more than 10,800 sports clubs from more than 65 different sports lived together in Catalonia. Only Andalusia, with just over 12,000 sports entities, has more. A pluralistic reality that Espanyol wanted to claim after the Generalitat de Catalunya launched (another) campaign to promote the territory which has as its guiding thread “the colors of the tourism brand Catalonia and FC Barcelona”.
The white-and-blue club, which faces Osasuna this Saturday (2 p.m., DAZN), has reversed the slogan chosen by the campaign, Feel the colours, to extend it to all Catalan clubs. “We’re sure you didn’t warn us because you knew we were busy these days. We’ve made some improvements that you’re sure to like”, responded Espanyol in a tweet on Twitter accompanied by a video where, beyond the white and blue, the identity of the Spanish entity, claim that “this is the land of thousands of clubs and millions of fans, each with its own colors, which tell a journey in a diverse and incredible land through history. All these colors show the beauty of our land.”
Espanyol has also gone further and registered two web domains – feelthecolours.cat and feelthecolours.com – where any fan and any club can add their favorite colours. “We have added other colors to your palette because it was very poor with only two,” the parakeet club quipped. La rèplica espanyolista ha estat força aplaudida a les xarxes socials per nombrosos clubs catalans que s’han volgut adherir a l’etiqueta que la Generalitat havia plantejat, #Feelthecolours, però amb l’ús que proposava l’Espanyol: reivindicar que Catalunya és molt more than two colors From UE Sant Andreu to Club Patí Vilafranca, passing through UE Vilassar de Mar, CF Barceloneta, CE Mataró or CE Canyelles, sports entities of very different categories and disciplines have participated with letters of support. “Our colors also cross borders and represent Catalonia. Our support for all the Catalan clubs in all the sports that are part of the Catalan social and sporting fabric,” said BM Granollers.
It is not the first time that Espanyol has responded with satire to a Generalitat campaign in which only Barça appeared. The noble offices of Cornellà-El Prat have been demanding for years that the Government modify some of the country’s promotion campaigns linked to sport that they considered exclusive, since only Barça appeared in them. With this campaign, that is to say, the Government ignores the Primera club that has given the opportunity to more Catalan players throughout the 21st century, Espanyol: since 2000 it has given minutes in the League to 91 footballers, quite a few more than Barça’s 58, as ARA explained a few weeks ago.
In 2017, a similar episode was repeated, with the Government publicizing the slogan If you feel FC Barcelona, you feel Catalunya (If you feel Barcelona, you feel Catalonia), which found an original response from Espanyol’s communication department: We feel Samoa (We feel from Samoa). Some fans, in fact, went so far as to buy Samoan flags online to take onto the pitch. A few years earlier, in the 2009-10 season, Espanyol wanted to claim the diversity of the territory by designing a game shirt with the names of the 946 municipalities in Catalonia printed on them. A country that, as the Spotify Camp Nou stands remind, is “more than a club”.