Toured Bernabeu Stadium, home of the Real Madrid Football Club. Tickets were pricey at $50 each, but after walking the trophy rooms displaying the hardware of a record 36 La Liga titles and 15 Champions League titles, and after reading the informational displays on Real Madrid’s decorated history, we are shown much more than expected: player’s locker rooms, press conference room, and views of the field from both the center deck and the sidelines.
To dive into the stadium’s namesake, Santiago Bernabeu served as team president for 35 years, from 1943 until 1978, and is the undoubted man of power behind transforming Real Madrid into the great postwar European club. Note 30 of those years occur under the time of Francisco Franco’s military dictatorship, 1938 –1973. This overlap brings to question where exactly Bernabeu fits into Franco’s Nationalist regime. In short, Bernabeu himself was a lifelong Nationalist, having himself fought on the side of Nationalist forces during Spain’s Civil War (1936-39). Afterward Bernabeu remained politically aligned with Spain’s military dictatorship headquartered in Madrid.
When it came to Real Madrid, Franco’s regime benefited from the publicity of club’s growing international success, while, within the political isolation of Spain, Real Madrid benefited from operating within a regime that saw the team as helpful to Spain’s international image, which was in shambles post-WWII. In the 1950s, Real Madrid became arguably the most famous club in the world, winning five European Cups throughout the decade. Their dominance on the pitch gave Spain’s government a badly needed symbol of international admiration that to foreign soccer fans offset Spain’s isolation as a backward dictatorship on Europe’s postwar periphery. Though Franco himself was never a committed soccer fan, nor were he and Bernabeu personal friends, he valued the soft power of Real Madrid’s success, and many of his senior officials were avid fans, regularly attending home matches.
On our tour of the stadium, there was only one scant reference to Franco, part of this is due to Spain since undergoing a concerted process of
de-Franco-ification (equivalent to modern Germany’s denazification), which has focused on eliminating public glorifications of Franco: statues, street names, foundations, official honors, and public symbols tied directly to his dictatorship. Though criticisms of his Nationalist ties persist, Santiago Bernabéu largely escapes sustained cultural scrutiny, and there has never been enough public pressure to remove his name from the stadium. This is largely because his surviving public status is tied overwhelmingly to the success of Real Madrid rather than to any role as a representative figure of Francoism.
Field undergoing resurfacing while the World Cup puts home matches on hold:
