A beginner’s guide to following La Liga in Spain - Part One.

I had the pleasure of moving to Spain just under five years ago now and like most Brits, one of the key aspects in any move is making sure you have your home comforts in your new surroundings. So of course that naturally meant shipping over my unnecessarily large TV, my Playstation 3 and.. well, that’s about it for the essentials.

Now, I like to feel that in general I don’t have many vices. For example, I don’t smoke and rarely drink (apart from special occasions, promise) so the only crux my other half has to put up with is my love of football. When I lived with my parents they, like many others, had the full TV sports package so throughout the years I watched more and more foreign football. La Liga was something else, something special. It felt like a feature-length production at the West End as some of the biggest names in football lit up the stage. The coverage of La Liga in England improved year upon year so I wasn’t worried about moving out here as I thought, if it’s good in England, it must be bloody marvellous in Spain.

Sadly this wasn’t and still isn’t the case. The first thing that smacks you after a few weeks of living here - and due to your low-to-poor communication skills restricting you to only talking about football with anyone that’ll listen – is how the media ignore almost every side that isn’t Real Madrid or Barcelona. It creates a huge divide as the country is split between the fans of the ‘Big Two’ and everyone else. The problem also stems from a lack of unity amongst fans of other sides. There are very few active supporters groups; the likes of which you can find in England, to show the clubs how upset fans are in general over the media obsession with the ‘Big Two’.

What’s worse is that due to the nonstop, ramming down your throat stories and non-stories (more of the latter than the former it has to be said) of the ‘Big Two’, fans are slowly forced to choose between which of the said evils they like more – or should that be, hate less? I found it so sad that some felt they needed to pick one of those two whenever the clubs met. You had fans of the same team being fragmented into pro-Real or Pro-Barca camps. What happened to the good, old fashioned hating of both?

Could you imagine a Tottenham fan choosing to cheer for Arsenal or Chelsea if the two faced each other?

The media portrayal isn’t limited to one platform either. The ‘Deportes’ section on all of the free-to-view TV channels are heavily ladled with Real Madrid content, followed by a sprinkling of Barca before a brief 90 second piece on the likes of Valencia and Atletico. If you support a smaller side, such as Rayo Vallecano or Granada, and they aren’t facing any of those four previously mentioned you’re lucky if your existence is even acknowledged – it’s embarrassing at times. I remember one time Jose Mourinho had a haircut and it was given around four minutes of TV time. Literally any news on Real Madrid is shown whether it be relevant or ridiculous.

They sometimes even mock-up players wearing Real Madrid shirts as they are certain the club will sign them - not always the case, of course. Professionalism.

You also have late night shows which are advertised as covering/analysing the main talking points in Spanish football but are essentially Real Madrid mouthpieces. It must be overkill for even the most hardened Madrid supporters as they replay a certain clip, what feels like a thousand times, and then announce ‘EXCLUSIVES’ which never seem to turn out to be true. But there must be some good debate, right? Wrong. It’s basically a shouting contest and the one who shouts loudest or foams at the mouth first wins. It’s as bizarre a format as it sounds.

It’s much of the same when it comes to the newspapers here as well. The most popular ones focus either solely or primarily on the ‘Big Two’. You can sometimes find 20-30 pages dedicated to those two while the rest are lucky to must half that combined. It further pushes the narrative that only two sides matter and you’re essentially wasting your time caring about anyone else.

The lack of coverage in the national media has meant local media become much more relevant and important for those outside the two main cities. This means that local outlets tend to have much stronger links with the club and thus have a stronger influence amongst fans. That in itself has its pros and cons as certain publications develop close relationships with coaches, presidents and/or owners and when their source is ousted, the narrative on the club takes a turn for the worse. Some casual fans don’t even watch matches so base their opinion on what they read which is a dangerous move to make as agendas soon become widespread opinion.

Another aspect that is completely different to the UK is where Spanish football fans watch games. Of course, plenty go to the stadium but the lack of planning – and logic – which goes into releasing the actual dates and times of games means many make plans then hope it doesn’t coincide with their team playing. I mentioned logic, too, as some of the kick-off times are outrageous. It’s not unheard of for matches to finish after midnight and some are even midweek. I remember watching Valencia play Espanyol in the Copa del Rey and it kicked off at 10PM on a Tuesday night. The game finished just before midnight and those fans that made the trip down from Barcelona then had a three and a half hour bus journey home.

The lack of category types for games is also an issue as you don’t know how much a ticket will cost until they release prices which, when the ‘Big Two’ are in town, can easily go beyond €100. There are also disgraceful allocations for away teams. Valencia were given just 600 tickets for their game at the Bernabeu back in May, a stadium which holds just over 81,000 in total. How is that fair? It’s not.

So if going to a game is too expensive, logistically impractical or impossible due a small amount of tickets being available you’d think that the pubs would be full – but they’re not. Spanish football fans don’t usually go to the pub to watch football matches. Instead, they prefer to go to a bar and have dinner with their other half, or a small group of friends, where they can watch the game while they have something to eat.

If they don’t watch the game in a bar then they go Peñas, which are fan clubs to you and I. They usually rent out a garage or a commercial property and each member makes a contribution per month/year to have access to the games. Depending on the location it could either be quite a nice little place or a just normal room with a sofa, a fridge and a widescreen TV.

The price of the football package – until this year – was exorbitant too. Fans turn to other methods such as Peñas, pirated digital boxes or internet streams in order to get their fix. The marketing of the product is still light years behind the UK and even now the biggest TV provider here in Spain, Movistar, has yet to reach an agreement with the channel showing Champions League and Europa League. No one wants to blink first in the negotiating and by all accounts both parties haven’t spoke for over a week now. And while they continue to play chicken over a couple of million, it’s the fans which are losing out on being able to watch their football team in Europe. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, despite having five sides in the Champions League this season, guess which two Spanish sides are the only ones being shown on free-to-view TV?