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Budgies, Banners, Bile and Barça - The Barcelona Derby

Andy Mitten attended the Barcelona derby and saw an Espanyol side struggling to escape from the shadows of their more illustrious cross-city rivals.

When Barcelona won a fourth European Cup in a decade in Berlin, they returned to the city from which they take their name for a victory parade.

As they left the airport, it was difficult to avoid a huge billboard with ‘Marvellous Minority’ splashed across it.

It was hard to avoid them all around Barcelona last year. Two words, paid for by the city’s other Primera Liga team, Espanyol.

It was a little nip from a blue and white budgie on the backside of the big elephant of Barça which shares the room.

Espanyol - or long suffering/cash-strapped/struggling Espanyol - as they’re often described, are seventh in the respected all-time Spanish league table.

They were sixth until Sevilla passed them last season, but while Sevilla can push for Champions League football on average crowds of 30,000, Espanyol are a selling club who have seen their average gate tumble from 26,000 in 2009 when they moved into their new 40,000 home at Cornella, to 18,700 last term when they finished 10th.

The decline is understandable - fans barely get to see products from their excellent youth system flourish before they’re sold.

Defender Eric Bailly managed just five first-team games before he went to Villarreal for €5.7 million last term, though Espanyol hope for better times and are waiting confirmation of a Chinese investment group in the process of buying 45% of shares in the club with €40 million of debt.

Espanyol are mid-table specialists, but they’ve had plenty of moments in the sun. They’ve won the Copa del Rey four times, most recently in 2006, the year before they reached the UEFA Cup final against Sevilla at Hampden Park losing on penalties after an enthralling match.

They also reached the final of the same competition – and lost on penalties again - in 1988 after beating three former European champions en route, including the Milan of Ruud Gullit and Marco Van Basten.

The blue and whites won the final first leg 3-0, yet Sport, one of the two main Catalan sport (for which read football) dailies, printed a picture of Barça coach Johan Cruyff on their front page the following day, with Espanyol’s achievements relegated to a small box in the corner.

When a team can’t make the front page of a sports paper in their home city after taking a 3-0 lead in a European final, the paranoid fears of some Espanyol fans that the media is suffocatingly pro-Barça seem justified.

It’s Wednesday 13 January and there’s an hour until kick-off in the third derbi between Barça and Espanyol in ten days. The two previous games have been ill-tempered, the angriest confrontations since Barça and Real Madrid kept meeting in 2011.

After an aggressive 0-0 draw at Espanyol on January 2, Barça won the first leg of the cup-tie 4-1 at Camp Nou.

Lionel Messi’s lower shin was stood on by goalkeeper Pau Lopez, while Luis Suarez was banned for two games after a tunnel altercation where, according to the referee’s report, he said: “I am waiting for you, come here. You are a waste of space.”

Espanyol also had Hernan Perez and Pape Diop sent off, the latter dismissed for an abusive comment aimed at Suarez.

The third game is the second leg of that Copa del Rey tie. There’s almost no chance of Espanyol coming back from three goals down against a team unbeaten in 21 matches and that limits the attendance to 20,000.

Officially there are no away fans, though 14 people can be counted in the away section and they’re clearly cules.

By the main stand, Espanyol fan Jorge De Arriba from El Prat, a barrio close to the airport, is preparing to take his seat.

“I’d describe our rivalry as being similar to Manchester City and Manchester United – before City got money,” explains the lifelong perico. “But we’re a proud club. We’ve won trophies, we have great support and we’ve been in La Liga since 1993.

“Only four clubs have been in the league longer than us – Barça, Madrid, Athletic and Valencia, but Espanyol is not even the second biggest club in Catalonia. Real Madrid have more fans here than us.

“But of course it’s frustrating that Barça can pick off some of our best young players and sign them for their B team – not even their first-team – as they did with Jonathan Soriano. It’s frustrating too that our news is relegated to page 34 of the newspapers, behind stories of women’s football and dinners at Barça supporters’ clubs.”

Espanyol’s smart new home is in Cornella at the southern edge of Barcelona’s urban sprawl and far from the tourist hotspots. The area around the ground is bordered by a river, a shopping centre, factories and a some of the cheapest housing in Barcelona.

It’s working class with a large with large numbers of immigrant families – from South America and elsewhere in Spain.

The arrival of Espanyol, after playing for most of their history in wealthy Sarria, followed by 15 years at the windswept Olympic Stadium, breathed more life into the area. Tonight, the tatty bars are full of fans who are wrapped up against the cold.

Around the corner from the One Euro bar which sells drinks for €1.50, police have closed the roads where Espanyol’s hardcore have gathered. Spain flags proliferate - as opposed to Catalan ones - and they sing songs abusing every facet of Barça, from mimicking their club anthem to their players.

It’s a theme which continues inside the ground, where one group of Espanyol ultras (traditionally right wing, now more apolitical) hold up huge banners stating ‘Our founders were Catalan, Yours were Swiss’. It’s an amusing dig at Barça who see themselves as a standard bearer for Catalan nationalism.

At least twice per game at Camp Nou, there are chants for Catalan independence. At Espanyol, they chide Barça about their Qatari and Swiss connections – though the official language of the club was switched to Catalan.

Victories against Barça are rare, but they memorably stopped them winning the league on the last day of the 2007 season when Espanyol hero Raul Tamudo scored two late goals at Camp Nou.

Barça players are detested, though Andres Iniesta is regularly applauded after he lifted his shirt while celebrating the winning goal of the 2010 World Cup final to reveal a dedication to Dani Jarque, Espanyol’s young captain who’d died the previous year while in his hotel room on a pre-season tour.

Gerard Pique – intelligent, successful, good looking, married to Shakira and from an upper class Barcelona background - is reviled. Pique has seen his family abused by Espanyol fans for years. He’s also responded, posting images of fans abusing his partner and son.

After last week’s game at Camp Nou, he wrote: “They brand themselves a marvellous minority. I hope they’re not such a minority as they can’t fill their own stadium as we saw last Saturday. Let’s see if they can fill it for the second leg.”

Espanyol spokesman Rafael Entrena felt Pique had gone “over the line too many times” and Pique’s seemingly innocuous words could be enough for Spain’s Anti-Violence commission to send a report to the Spanish FA’s competition committee.

Espanyol couldn’t come close to filling their ground - and €90 ticket prices for non-members didn’t help - but the hardcore remain proud and unfurled a banner before kick-off which read.

‘More than a game. Our dignity. Honour us.’ Which means, ‘we know we’re not going to win, but don’t see us humiliated’.

It was the first of many banners. Spain has cracked down heavily on incitement, politicking and violence around football. Security has been increased, bans and fines dispensed and sections of stadiums closed. They can’t clamp down on irony and sarcasm, though.

One banner read: “Shakira is for all of us” – which can be read several ways.

It was followed by a chant asking where Pique was. The defender, and Neymar – who’d been the victim of alleged racism from an Espanyol fan, were kept out of Luis Enrique’s starting XI.

Meetings between representatives, coaches and fans of both clubs were held to calm the mood before the third game. They failed.

Luis Suarez had a banner reading: ‘L Suarez. You’re a barker and a biter’. Suarez had protected a clearly riled Messi – who bore his angriest barrio face - in the second game, the street footballers coming out in both. Messi’s disdain would linger to the third leg.

In among the banners - another one remember the death of an Espanyol fan after fights between the two sets of fans 25 years ago - and the enmity, a football match broke out.

When Barcelona’s Munir put his side a goal up in front of the Curva after 31 minutes, it was greeted by silence and then visceral anger as the visiting players had the audacity to celebrate.

The Barça players were under orders not to provoke, but at times they couldn’t help it. It was tit for tat. When Messi went down injured, Espanyol fans urged their team to carry on and then booed when the ball was put out of play so he could be treated.

When Munir got his side’s second after 87 minutes, goalkeeper Bardi angrily pushed the celebrating players away. Barça were ruthless. As Aleix Vidal, who’d spent part of his youth career at Espanyol, strongly cursed a late missed chance, you might have forgiven him if it was in the last minute of a goalless world cup final, not a tie they were leading 6-1.

In the last minute, Messi went to take a corner. Some of those fans who’d seen enough and were on their way home, rushed down the steps towards him where they hollered abuse.

Security rushed to the vicinity, while the world’s best player began nonchalantly doing keepy ups – knowing it would wind fans up further. It did.

At the final whistle, Messi (and most of his team-mates) didn’t shake hands with a single opposing player. Instead, they gathered in the centre circle and applauded the Espanyol. The gesture did and was met by a wall of whistles, but on a night for irony, sarcasm and subtle digs against their neighbours, what else did they expect?