Just Kicking It

Football and Nationalism in Spain during Francisco Franco's Regime

Abstract

This project explores the role football played during Francisco Franco’s pursuit to unify Spain’s regional nationalisms into one Spanish nationalism. Previous research defined Franco’s Spanish nationalism tools, and this project applies those tools to football and examines the success of using nationalistic techniques to unite Spanish nationalism. Cultural Identity Theory helps inform this research by explaining the differences in cultural identity throughout the regions in Spain. To conduct this project, the research process included using three newspaper sources from three regions in Spain (Castilla, Cataluña, and the Basque Country), exploring the archives of each newspaper to download individual newspaper articles. For the analysis, this project applied Franco’s Spanish nationalism techniques from previous literature to the newspaper articles to thematically organize and code the articles, identifying trends in football and Spanish nationalism. The analysis revealed Franco applied Spanish nationalism techniques to football in an effort to abandon regional identity and culture in Spain in favor of a Spain with a collective national culture. Franco eliminated opposition to his regime by forcing Spanish ideas and values onto football, overpowering regional autonomy. Examining football’s role during Franco’s regime helps disclose how leaders around the world are using the relationship between football, other entities that are not inherently political, and nationalism as a tool to achieve political goals.