L’escut del Barça

By: Isaiah | December 2nd, 2008

A day or two ago, reader Andrew asked what was going on with Atletico Madrid’s crest (a bear and a strawberry tree? Say what?) and ~~Anthony~~ Al over on the Atletico blog kindly responded with a full post explaining el Oso y el Madroño. Reader Ursus checked in with some ursine links of his own (here and here).

However, it’s not like Andrew was going to stop there and just wonder about Atletico’s crest. Not here, not at the Barça Offside, dedicated 24/7 to the blaugrana. For those of you who don’t know where the club’s crest (also called a shield) came from or just want to refresh their memory, Andrew did a bit of research. Thanks a bunch, Andrew, for looking all this stuff up. [Ed note: I've rewritten some of it, but it's mostly Andrew's work; for instance, I corrected his crazy British spellings.]

The club’s first crest (1899-1910) used the city of Barcelona’s coat of arms with a few decorative additions: a diamond divided into four quarters, two displaying the St. George’s cross while the other two each displayed two of the four red stripes of the Catalan flag (senyera). This was framed by a branch of a laurel tree, a branch of a palm tree and a crown with a bat on top of it.* This crest remained in place until 1910, when the club decided it needed its own badge.

Back to the crest, in 1910 a competition was held by the club in which interested members could submit proposals of a new crest. The competition was won by Carles Comamala, a player on the team from 1902 until 1912.** His entry looks very similar to the one that’s used today:

The St. George cross (Sant Jordi in Catalan) which appears in the top left corner of the crest is used because Sant Jordi is the patron saint of Catalonia; he was a soldier of the Roman Empire and a Christian martyr who, after canonization, was adopted as the patron saint of the Crown of Aragon, thus the connection to Barcelona.

Legend has it that the four red bars of the Catalan flag, which graces the upper right corner of the crest, were drawn on Count Wilfred the Hairy’s golden shield by King Charles the Bald’s fingers, after they were dipped in the blood from the count’s war wounds during the siege of Barcelona in 897. In case you’re unfamiliar with the history of the senyera, check out the fairly thorough (if poorly written) Wiki page. It gives quite a few possibilities for the flag’s origins (including the commonly held opinion above), if nothing concrete.

Since Comamala’s initial entry, the most significant change to the club crest that took place was the replacement of the club’s initials, FCB (Futbol Club de Barcelona), which feature in a band across the center of the crest, with CFB (Club de Futbol de Barcelona). This was the official Spanish name of the club, as opposed to the Catalan FCB. The change was enforced by the Franco dictatorship in an attempt to downplay Catalan culture and identity. The four red stripes were also reduced to two in order to remove the Catalan flag from the crest.

It was on the clubs 50th anniversary in 1949 that the four red bars were reinstituted but it was not until 1974 when the club finally reclaimed its original lettering of FCB thus restoring the crest to its original 1910 state.

The present crest is an adaptation by designer Claret Serrahima which he created in 2002 in order to simplify its presentation in order that it may be easier for the club’s corporate identity to be reproduced in many different formats.

Sources:
FC Barcelona Official Site - The Crest
FC Barcelona Official Site - The Colors
Wikipedia: FC Barcelona (Catalan - English);

—–
*Perhaps a native Catalan can help us out a bit here…Do laurel branches, palm trees, crowns, and bats symbolize Catalan identity? If so, how? (for instance, the bald eagle supposedly represents the US because it’s a powerful bird of prey, though Ben Franklin disagreed; bats are also used in Valencia’s crest, what’s up with that?)

**On a side note, one of the theories the club espouses as possibly why the team’s colors are blaugrana is because of “the mother of the Comamala brothers supplied the players with red and blue sashes so that they could differentiate between each other in the days before they had a kit of their own.” (source) If that’s true, well, we owe that family quite a debt of gratitude, huh?