Espanyol. The other football team in Barcelona. Yes, there is another team. Not that you’d know it from walking around the city. I normally do a double take when I see someone wearing an Espanyol shirt. Barça shirts, on the other hand, are everywhere. Worn by tourists more than by locals. FC Barcelona is so famous now that Camp Nou has become an essential stop for tourists wanting the full Barcelona experience. Sagrada Familia, Park Guell, and then a game at Camp Nou.

If you asked the average tourist about Espanyol, they’d have no idea who you were talking about.

Who are the other football team in Barcelona?

I’ve lived in Barcelona for about two and a half years now. And I’ve watched a lot of Barça games.  I’ve lost track of the amount of incredible moments I’ve witnessed. I must have seen hundreds of goals. Possibly a hundred from Messi alone.

But I’ve always been intrigued by the other football team in Barcelona. I’ve come close to buying tickets to watch them before now, but there was always one reason or another why I couldn’t make it.

I told myself I’d definitely go this season, and a couple of weeks ago I realised that the home game against Valencia – the last game of the season at Estadi Cornellà-El Prat – would be my last chance. So I bought a ticket. Behind the goal. Not far from the ultras. The full experience.

When I told a couple of Barça fans about my plans for Saturday, their response surprised me. It was essentially along the lines of “be careful.”

Be careful? Why?

“Aah, it’s because those guys can be pretty aggressive.”

“And right wing. The directors are all PP members.”

PP is Partido Popular. The conservative ruling party in Spain.

Is this just what Barça fans would say? I wondered. I had to go and find out for myself.

Barça and the moral monopoly

As a football fan I know that partisanship can often get in the way of the truth. Sometimes it’s easier to continue a story about a rival team, even if you know deep down that it’s a generalization and, at least on some levels, untrue.

Then there’s the fact that some Barça fans have a tendency to look down on most other teams. Not just Espanyol.

Occasionally you can detect a holier than thou attitude from Barça fans. It is, after all, Mes Que Un Club. More than a club. They pride themselves on the club’s identity. At Barça they do things the right way, they say. The club promotes youth players. From the youth teams to the first team, they play the game the way it should be played – in an attractive style. Oh, and the club is owned by the fans rather than some rich, foreign investor.

The other thing that has always been associated with Barça is a strong tie to Catalan identity. There’s the old story of the Camp Nou being a kind of refuge during the Franco dictatorship. A place where people could speak Catalan freely and talk politics. And even now it can be a pretty political place. Catalan flags are waved alongside those of Barça colours during the games at Camp Nou. And on the 17th minute and 14th second of each half of each home game, cries of “INDEPENDENCIA” echo from the steep stands of the old stadium. 1714 is seen as the date Catalans lost their independence and were swallowed up, against their will, into Spain.

So if Barça feel they have a moral monopoly in Barcelona, where does that leave Espanyol? Some Barça fans I spoke to think the PP link today goes back to the fact that Espanyol has always been supportive of Spain, and received support from the Franco dictatorship. A Spanish state puppet club in Barcelona, they’d say. Everything Barça aren’t.

The road to Cornellà

I knew that attending one game at Estadi Cornellà-El Prat wouldn’t give me all the answers, but I wanted to go there, have a look around and soak it in. After so many games at Camp Nou, I feel like I understand a bit of what it is to be a Barça fan. But what does it mean to support the other football team in Barcelona?

As I walked to the stadium from Cornellà Centre metro station, I passed couples wearing the blue and white striped colours of Espanyol. I saw families eating patatas bravas in cafes, with the team’s scarf hung on their chairs. It was a strange feeling to be surrounded by reminders of a team that I barely ever encounter day-to-day in the city.

There were lots of kids wearing the full kit, kicking a football around in a park near the stadium. I wondered whether they ever secretly wished their dad had taken them to Camp Nou instead. They must have lots of Barça supporting classmates, celebrating one victory after another.

A one-sided rivalry

Barça fans, particularly in the last few years, have been spoiled by success. Expectations are now ridiculously high. It’s not uncommon to go on Twitter and find some of them complaining about a manager that in the past two seasons has delivered two league titles, two Spanish cups, and a Champions League trophy.

In the last 10 years, Barça have won 6 league titles, 3 Champions League trophies and 4 Copa Del Rey trophies.

In the same time, Espanyol have won nothing. The last trophy they won was the Copa Del Rey in 2006.

If I thought there might be some acrimony on the part of the Espanyol supporters, this dissipated once I got to the stadium. One of the first songs the ultras to my left started singing was “que bien es seguir Espanyol!” How great it is to support Espanyol.

What it means to follow Espanyol

At half time a man arrived and took the seat to my right. He announced to everyone who might be interested that his wife’s parents were in town and that they’d taken an eternity to leave. That, he said, was why he was so late to the game. His son to his right looked a little embarrassed and immediately got his phone out, which stayed in his hands until the end of the game.

I think he was interested as to why an English guy was sat next to him, so I said hello and told him it was my first time watching Espanyol. I admitted, slightly tentatively, that I’d been to Camp Nou a few times. As I made this confession I was very aware of the fact that about 10 metres to my left, about 20 shirtless ultras were singing an anti-Barça song more or less on repeat.

The man wasn’t surprised at my admission, telling me that there were lots of guiris there these days. A guiri is what Spanish people call tourists, normally from Northern Europe. The truth is that I’d seen a bunch of Scottish guys in Rangers shirts outside the ground earlier, but I decided not to mention this.

I asked him what the best thing about supporting Espanyol was for him. His answer – that they aren’t Barça.

There were no chants for Catalan independence at  Estadi Cornellà-El Prat. There were some Catalan flags though, as well as some Spanish ones, which I don’t remember ever seeing at Camp Nou. It also seemed like Spanish was being spoken much more than at Camp Nou where I mostly hear Catalan (from the locals).

But then maybe this is just representative of Barcelona itself. Not everybody in the city wants Catalonia to be independent, and there are lots of people whose mother tongue is Spanish, rather than Catalan. Especially in the outskirts like Cornellà de Llobregat where the stadium is.

As for the game itself? Valencia scored the only goal around 12 minutes from the end. “Typical Espanyol” was the verdict of the man to my right. By the end he looked like he wished his in-laws had taken even longer to say their goodbyes.