The political context of the time has led both Real Madrid and Barcelona to label this match as the 'match of shame'.
The history of the Clásicos has seen all kinds of episodes, from the great feats of the best players in history to unforgettable slaps on the wrists and even boring tributes to goalless football. However, it is striking that, buried among the things we no longer want to remember, there is little mention of the fact that the most emphatic result of the dozens of matches between Real Madrid and Barcelona that have taken place was the visit to Chamartín that ended 11-1.
"Real Madrid never boast about that game," explained Joan Barau, a journalist specialising in Barcelona's history, to Goal's microphone. "Basically because it wasn't a football match," he said. We are talking about a cup clash in June 1943. Barcelona had won the first leg 3-0 and had to hold out at the old Chamartín stadium to qualify for the final. "That Real Madrid turned the tie around is not surprising, the result is, which perfectly explains that it was more of a humiliation, a spectacle closer to what could be seen in a Roman circus than a football match".
The Les Corts stadium had received the Whites in a particularly hostile atmosphere, not forgetting that it was only four years since the end of the Civil War. "There was the Law of Political Responsibilities, according to which anyone who was not loyal to the principles of the regime was suspect," said Barau, who also noted that in the first leg, the Blue and Whites' fans "were heated by Real Madrid's rough play", an argument that many media used to "create such animosity towards Barcelona that the match was hardly played".
The match reached half-time with the scandalous score of 8-0. According to what the widow of the Blue and Whites' goalkeeper, Lluís Miró, told the journalist Xavier G. Luque, the white strikers kept pressing him as if the score was a goalless draw, to which Miró gave the ball to the rival, urging him to score, if they were so keen to take part in that public humiliation. The striker refused to finish off that gifted chance but it did not prevent the scoreline from being 11-1 at the end of ninety minutes, the highest in the history of the Clásico.
"It is remembered as the match of shame" explained Barau, "a result that Real Madrid has never brought up because it uncovers the worst ghosts of the darkest Spain" and takes the reader back to a harsh post-war era in which hunger was as present in the lives of Spaniards as the very censorship with which they would live for the next three decades. Football was their solace.
Legend has it that at half-time the Spanish army even intervened, making an appearance in the Barcelona dressing room. "It's a story that has never been proven and not a single one of the Barcelona players who were in that dressing room remains, but it's obvious that to score eleven goals you have to play against an absent opponent, because it's not usual in any case. There were warnings in the press in the days leading up to the game. "These warnings made some of the Barcelona players consider whether it was worth putting up resistance and they didn't".
Because "the match was much more than a mere sporting duel, it was about teaching a lesson and humiliating the club that represented like no other a totally different way of thinking, closer to the ideas of Catalanism". And despite the fact that Barcelona were used to all kinds of insults - Mingo Balmanya recalled how the fact that they were called "Catalan dogs" on many pitches was more of a motivation than anything else - "in that tie Barcelona were overcome by sheer fear in the face of military pressure and people close to the Falange who heated up the atmosphere". So that they can then say that football and politics have never been mixed in this country.
Source images: Twitter La Liga.