BARCELONA V REAL MADRID IS MUCH MORE THAN A FOOTBALL MATCH

The European Cup semi-final between Barcelona and Real Madrid is not a football tie, it's a war going back to the 1920s. Although Real have more than drawn first blood in the Nou Camp, Wednesday's second leg will be another bitter battle in Barça's quest to vanquish nationalist Spain. Chris Nawrat reports

THERE ARE derbies and there are derbies. But trying to understand the rivalry between Real Madrid and Barcelona through the prisms of Celtic versus Rangers, Liverpool versus Everton or Spurs versus Arsenal is a mistake. As Barça's motto makes clear, it is "more than a club".

Whenever Real step out on to the Nou Camp (Our Ground, in Catalan) they are not just facing a football team they are facing the whole of the Catalan nation. On Tuesday night they were greeted by a cacophony of sound and flares, plus myriad Catalan and Barcelona flags from the 95,000 Barça fans in the stadium, completely drowning out the 3,000 Real fans.

Outside there were another four million Catalans watching on television in bars, restaurants and in their homes, with flags and banners on their walls and hanging from their balconies. They were praying that the team which embodies their separatist aspirations would overcome the team which represents a succession of governments that have oppressed them. A point made clear by a huge banner in the stadium which read: "Catalonia is not Spain".

Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, a semi-autonomous province of Spain with its own language, flag and national anthem, all of which have, for long periods in the last 80 years, been banned by Madrid regimes. Any transgressions were heavily punished. Thus following Barça became the main political vehicle by which Catalans could express their hatred of central government, particularly during Franco's 46-year dictatorship.

Franco, a football obsessive himself - he even used to do the pools every week from the El Pardo palace - fully understood the Spanish passion for the game and tried to use it as a political tool. In the midst of the Civil War, Franco's generals took control of a number of the leading clubs, set up their own Spanish FA (recognised by Fifa) and launched a sports newspaper, 'Marca', designed to convert the mass following of football from left- wing politics to the right.

When Franco's fascist forces finally prevailed over the Republicans in 1939, the Spanish Cup was renamed the Generalissimo's Cup after the dictator. And Barça, who had narrowly survived the Civil War, came in for a pounding. The name was changed from "Football Club Barcelona" to "Barcelona Club de Futbol" to make it Spanish and not English; all board meetings and minutes had to be in Spanish, not Catalan; ditto all announcements at the ground.

As the Catalan flag was also banned - yellow and red stripes - Barça's crest had to be changed from four yellow and red bars to two. If the Francoistas had known the origin of Barça's distinctive blue and maroon shirts, they'd have changed them too. They are the colours of an Old Boy's rugby team of an English public school - Merchant Taylor's - chosen as a tribute to the Englishmen who helped found the club in 1899.

Then Franco's minions set about the board of directors, installing pro-Franco Catalans to quell any use of the club as a tool of the anti-Franco, pro-Catalonia resistance. With Barça's president, Josep Sunyol, and an elected deputy to the national parliament, already murdered by Franco troops outside Madrid at the start of the Civil War, there was little opposition.

Franco's secret police also used their secret files to vet potential club officials to weed out anybody who might not be pro the dictatorship. The first new president installed under Franco not only knew nothing about sport, he had never even seen a football match. Barça as a political Catalan icon was to be permanently neutered.