Opinion | Manchester City could be the biggest losers as Pep Guardiola’s distant Catalonia protest sounds bum note

The rogue Manchester City supporting element in my family travelled to Wembley Stadium on Sunday wearing yellow ribbons. Despite knowing that I spent most of my time in Catalonia, pay taxes there and have two Catalan speaking children, they’d never asked about the imprisoned independence leaders Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sanchez.

You see yellow ribbons around Barcelona in support of the two men, but they’re not everywhere. The frenzy around Catalan independence has calmed significantly in 2018 after December’s elections when more people in Catalonia’s biggest two cities, Barcelona and Tarragona, voted for parties opposing a Catalonian breakaway. But in Santpedor, the nondescript town of 7,000 where Pep Guardiola grew up and where his parents still live, as in much of the rural Catalan hinterland, feelings are strongly pro-independence.

The cause gained fresh impetus on Friday when Manchester City manager Guardiola – a Catalan nationalist – was fined by the English Football Association for wearing a political message in the form of the yellow ribbon.

On Saturday evening, thousands of giant yellow ribbons were distributed outside Camp Nou ahead of the first Catalan derby between FC Barcelona and Girona. A large ‘Liberty’ flag was unfurled in the same position as a ‘Catalonia is not Spain’ banner has been unfurled for the biggest Barca matches for the last 20 years. Camp Nou has long been a hotbed of chants in favour of independence, which have been aired during the 17th minute of each half for the last five years as the push for independence grew.

The chants have long been loud, but there was never any serious opposition to Catalonian separatism until the autumn of 2017, when several huge anti-independence marches showed that the push was anything but a unanimous one. Families remain bitterly divided on the question.

When independence was briefly declared, Spain’s government declared it illegal and cracked down, businesses relocated their headquarters outside Catalonia, tourism dropped and the separatists found international support for their cause lacking.