CATALONIA, like the Basque country, is a Spanish region which has established its own national language and a very proud sense of its identity. Football is the most popular sport in Catalonia and its famous football club, Barcelona, is the most important icon of Catalan national pride. The significance of the club extends well beyond sport and has a political and social dimension for Catalans. The club’s motto, ‘Barca, nee que un club,’ (More than a club), first made in a speech by its president Narcis de Carreras in 1968, remains as strong as ever.
By the end of the 19th century Catalonia had the most developed industrial and commercial economy in Spain. Strong trading links existed with Britain, and Barcelona developed a thriving British expatriate community, several members of which owned companies in the city and its surrounding areas, especially in the textile industries and to a lesser degree in the railway and other industries. However, football in Catalonia did not take root as quickly as it had done in the Basque country of Spain.
There are the usual reports of games being played by the sailors of Royal Navy and merchant ships when visiting the port. They would often make up scratch sides to play football against any local sides interested in doing so. But it took time to get official approval for the game and to overcome opposition from the Catalan bourgeoisie who were initially wary of any unseemly sporting activity which involved the display of even a hint of flesh. And the Catalan sporting clubs which were formed tended to be strongly nationalistic and reluctant to open their doors to foreigners.
One of the first serious initiatives to introduce the sport came from 1890–95 from a Scottish textile company, J. & P. Coats, in the town of Torello, just outside Barcelona. The factory in Torello manufactured and traded yarn, and the company established a football club as part of the recreational resources for its workers, mainly Scots. It was called the Asociación de Torelló (it is worth noting that this important company itself played a part in helping to spread football around the world. It had a policy of promoting football whereever it set up production in the early years of the game).
Around the same time, in Barcelona itself, there are some shadowy references to a Barcelona Football Society which was chaired by the British consul Mr Wyndham. By 1896 it had disappeared. But its former members, plus some new recruits, got together to form the so-called English Club, and played football and other games together on Sunday mornings at the Bonanova Velodrome in the city. It is very likely that among them would be found two British brothers, Arthur Witty and his younger brother Ernest. Both were destined to have a major influence on the development of FC Barcelona.
The Witty brothers were the sons of a British entrepreneur, Frederick Witty, who came from a Yorkshire family. He had originally intended to emigrate to Argentina but was persuaded to go to Barcelona, where in 1873 he founded his own shipping agency under the name of F. Witty. Both the brothers were now working for their father.
They had excelled at games at their British public school, Merchant Taylor’s, and were very enthusiastic sportsmen. On their return to Barcelona they took up employment in the family business which was flourishing. They had played a few casual games of football against employees of other English companies, but wanted something more organised and challenging. It was said that they had become bored with what seemed to be the only serious sport in the city at the time, gymnastics, and would challenge each other to keep fit by running races. However, their sporting lives were soon to be boosted when in 1899 a young man from Switzerland arrived in the city. His name was Hans Gamper.
On 22 October 1899 the following advertisement appeared in the Barcelona newspaper, Los Deportes. It read, ‘Our friend and companion Hans Gamper, from the Football section of the Sociedad Los Deportes and former Swiss (football) champion, wishing to organise some football games in Barcelona, asks anyone who likes this sport enough to present themselves at the office of the newspaper on Tuesday or Friday between nine and 11 pm.’
The Witty brothers were delighted to hear about the advertisement. It was just the sort of opportunity they were looking for and they lost no time in making contact with Gamper and signing up to the proposal. They were impressed by the vision he set out for the proposed club. ‘He had the idea and then inspired us with his enthusiasm,’ said Arthur. ‘His powers of persuasion were very great. That’s why we all followed him.’ [Jimmy Burns. Barca. Bloomsbury. London. 1999, p.77]
Hans (later Joan) Gamper had gone to Barcelona to visit his uncle. He was scheduled to go on to Africa to help set up some sugar trading companies. He soon found himself in love with the city and decided to stay on. However there was one thing missing. Gamper was another avid sportsman, but above all he wanted to play football. His name may not be familiar with everyone, but to Barcelona supporters he is as important as the club’s other stars like Alcántara, Rijkaard, Cruyff, Kubala, and Messi.
Gamper had an extraordinary sporting career. He was born in Winterleg, Switzerland, and when his mother died of tuberculosis when he was eight, the family moved to Basel. He had precocious talent for many sports. As a footballer in Switzerland he became captain of FC Basel and co-founder of FC Zurich. Apart from football, during his career he also played rugby union, tennis and golf. He had won medals as an athlete and as a cyclist in Switzerland.
On arriving in Barcelona he joined the Gimnasio Sole – Barcelona’s main sports club – but to his disappointment many of its well-to-do members showed little interest in football, a game they regarded more for the poorer citizens and somewhat below their dignity. Gamper’s patience soon ran out and he was confident that many of the acquaintances he had formed in the city felt the same. He sat down and wrote his famous newspaper advertisement – one that would become one of the most significant in the story of football.
The response to the advertisement was positive enough to confirm Gamper’s opinion, that as well as the Witty brothers, there were indeed several other young men in Barcelona – both Spanish and foreign – who were interested in playing football. His next step was to convene a meeting on 29 November 1899 at the Sole to discuss the way forward. Twelve men attended – six Spaniards, three Englishmen, two Swiss and one German – and without further ado unanimously agreed that the Football Club Barcelona should be formed.
The Englishmen present were Walter Wild and the brothers John and William Parsons. Since Wild was the oldest member present, at the request of Gamper he was elected as the first president of the club. Wild was elected three times as president between 1899 and 1901. He made some important contributions to the club in its early years as well as playing in defence for the team.
He was a well-to-do resident of the city, with good contacts, and allowed his flat in Carrer Princesa to be used for the first board meetings. A skilful diplomatist, he was able to keep the new club on reasonable terms with its main rival, FC Catala, a club also recently formed but which had rejected Gamper for being a foreigner. Wild also enabled Barcelona to find its first home ground at Hotel Casonovas (today Hospital de Sant Pau). In 1901 Wild was called back to work in England and was obliged to resign from the presidency of the club.
In early December 1899 the fledging side, bearing the name FC Barcelona, took the field for their inaugural game against an English Select team in a match played at Bonanova cycle race track, now known as Turo Park. The two teams had ten men each and both in fact included several players who had also been recruited by Gamper, including Arthur Witty. The English Select won 1-0 with Arthur scoring the only goal. Later in the month, on Christmas Eve, Arthur Witty made his first official debut for the Barcelona team in a 3-1 win over FC Catala.
The long and illustrious career of FC Barcelona was underway. But it was not going to be easy and the early years, from 1899 to 1922, were to be critical. A cosmopolitan team, largely drawn from foreign members of the city’s of the middle and upper classes, was hardly likely to appeal to the cause of Catalan nationalism which was proving to be a powerful force.
Moreover, by 1900 there were several football clubs formed in the city who were proving tough competitors, notably FC Catala, and Espanyol – whose founding statutes specifically declared, ‘We create this club to compete with the foreigners of FC Barcelona.’ [Goldblatt. p.149]
Gamper remained true to his conviction that his club should be open to everyone regardless of their origin, but accepted that the foreign image needed modification. He decided that this would be best done by firmly associating it with the rise of Catalan nationalism so it could develop a true Catalan identity. He demonstrated his own devotion to his adoptive Catalonia by learning the language. As his son, Arthur, was to record later, ‘From the moment he fixed his residence in Barcelona his main objective was to become a Catalan citizen like everybody else.’ [Burns p.83]h
Although clearly Hans Gamper must be regarded as the true founder of FC Barcelona, in those crucial early years it was the Witty brothers, and especially Arthur, who were the driving force behind its development. They may not have had the vision of Gamper, and coming from a rather English colonial background they were reluctant to get drawn into Catalan politics. But they were astute businessmen and as determined as Gamper to make sure that the new club was well organised and successful.
They worked hard to overcome initial indifference within the local community. They were the first to appreciate that the club needed to show it was more than a bunch of enthusiastic players. It had to recruit good players and become popular by playing attractive football and winning trophies. It was also important to get support and financial backing from the business community, and they took the lead in organising a number of games for the club with the workers of the firms with which they had business links.
Practicalities, too, needed to be addressed, and one of Ernest Witty’s first tasks in 1900 was to go to England and to return with a large suitcase full of regulation-sized footballs, goal nets and a referee’s whistle. The permanent ground which with Wild’s help had been acquired earlier needed to be properly prepared and equipped. After a year’s rental of the site, Arthur Witty proposed a further removal of the club’s ground and was the driving force behind the move to waste land on the Horta road in the suburbs of the city. The land was carefully levelled and an adjoining farmhouse was converted into a clubhouse with changing rooms for the players and room made to accommodate the spectators.
Just why Barcelona originally chose to wear their famous blue and crimson shirts – known in Spain as Blaugrana – has been a matter of debate among the club’s historians and no conclusive agreement has been reached. Most of the theories date to the origins of the club back in the late 1890s. A much disputed legend is that it was the Witty brothers who were responsible for importing the famous Barcelona shirts together with other goods.
Both had attended Merchant Taylor’s School in Crosby, Merseyside, England, founded in 1651 during the reign of Elizabeth I. By the time the brothers were at the school, both football and rugby were firmly established and the boys would have thrived on its sporting activities. The story goes that Arthur Witty scored an early winning goal for Barcelona actually wearing the rugby kit he used to wear at the school. And much later, in 1975, the school’s then headmaster the Rev. H.M. Luft confirmed, ‘I think it is very likely that the present colours of Football Club Barcelona are ultimately derived from our original colours here.’ [Burns p. 78]
However, another strong claim is that the colours were adopted from those of Basel FC, the Swiss football club which Gamper had helped to found earlier in his life. It has also been asserted that they were the colours of the Swiss canton where he was born. Yet another, rather unlikely theory, is that Gamper was an accountant and that he derived the colours from the red and blue accountancy pencils that were very popular at the time! Whatever the explanation, there can be no question that from its earliest days the Barcelona shirt has become one of the most recognisable designs in world football.
The two brothers proved to be strong and skilful members of the Barca team which consistently beat their close rivals in the city over those first few seasons. Arthur was a forward while Ernest played as a defender.
Ernest was also a very good tennis player. He had been instrumental in bringing tennis into the city and founder of what is now Real Club de Tennis in Barcelona. In the early 1900s he was probably the best tennis player of his time in Spain. Arthur too had other sporting interests besides football and was a good rower and golfer. However, it was Arthur who took the lead as regards the development of the football club, both on and off the field.
At nearly six feet tall, strongly built, dark haired and sporting the full moustache customary at the time, he had a powerful presence on the field. He claimed that he was not interested in any specialised training but he was a keen walker and certainly knew how to keep himself fit.
Between 1899 and 1905, Arthur played 74 games for the club. He was a member of the team which won Barcelona’s first trophy, the Copa Macaya in 1902, the precursor to the Catalan Football Championship. He also helped the club win the Copa Barcelona in 1903 and in the 1904/05 season Barcelona were proclaimed as the first champions of Catalonia.
Arthur was always modest about his own ability compared with that of Gamper. He recalled in later years, ‘Without a doubt Gamper was the best centre-forward. He had an extraordinary control of the ball and dribbled better than anybody else. He was also a great striker. He scored more goals than anybody else. He’d run a lot, lifting his knees up; he gave an image of huge potential that I’ve seen in very few players.’ [Burns p.79]
On 17 September 1903, Arthur Witty, or Don Arturo as he became known, was appointed to be the fourth president of FC Barcelona after having previously served on the board of directors. Working with Gamper, he helped create a style of play that has become characteristic of Barcelona throughout most of their history – a combination of physicality combined with plenty of movement and short, quick and accurate passing. It was attractive football and reaped its awards. The club soon became the best-supported one in the city with a fanbase of several thousands.
The Witty brothers were very much a product of the public school ethos and British Empire, and dedicated to the notions of sportsmanship and fair play. Imbued in the Corinthian tradition, they had strong views on how players should conduct themselves on the playing field. Arthur Witty is said to have drawn up the following golden rules for the club:
1: Play good and fair, never talk, let alone discuss or argue anything with a referee.
2: If you lose, it’s because the other side played better so shake them by the hand.
3: If you get hurt, pick yourself up. Keep going.
4: Act like a gentleman at all times.
Not surprisingly, these high-minded aspirations proved difficult always to maintain, especially in some of the encounters with some of Barcelona’s closest rivals, and it is far from clear whether an enthusiast like Gamper would have subscribed to them all. In a fiercely contested match in February 1900 against Catala FC, after what was adjudged to be a brutal foul by one of the Barcelona players, a punch-up broke out and two players were sent off. True to his Corinthian values, Arthur Witty, as the captain of Barcelona, felt he had to take responsibility for letting the game degenerate so much, and promptly tendered his resignation. This was rejected by Barcelona’s management board who then announced that the club would not play another game against Catala for a year.
When he took over the presidency of Barcelona in 1903, Arthur Witty took the initiative to broaden the club’s horizons by arranging Barcelona’s first game against international opposition. On Boxing Day 1903, a club from Toulouse, Stade Olympique, were invited to play Barcelona at their new ground. Cheered on by a large crowd, the home side won 4-0 with Gamper scoring two goals. In May 1904 they travelled to Languedoc for a return match against the same opponents. Witty also set about strengthening the side. He encouraged the development of young players at the club. Several, such as Forns, Comamala, Hornos, Quirante and Soler, were to graduate from the reserves to the first team and later became stars, a policy that did not please some of the older members.
Witty stepped down as president in October 1905. Just why is not clear. Perhaps he found the task of running the club and his family’s busy commercial business too much of a burden. It is likely, too, that the political tensions around the rise of Catalan nationalism, with which Barca had become linked, were not entirely to his liking. He may well have been finding that business and politics did not easily mix.
He did later confess that he disliked seeing the ‘excess of passion, and the partisan attitude of the crowd. This habit of protesting every decision that goes against the team, and of applauding whenever the same foul is committed by one of our people, is neither just nor sportsmanlike. Nor is the habit of taking on the referees. The referee is the only authority there on the football pitch and should be respected.’ [Burns p.82]
Arthur remained a member of the club during his lifetime (in fact he was the second official member of the club after Gamper) but rejected offers from his business colleagues to join Barca’s management board. He was to be the last British president of FC Barcelona.
Within three years of Witty’s departure the club ran into playing and financial problems which inevitably sparked off some internal wrangling. No trophy had been won since the Campional de Catalunya in 1905. Key players had retired and were not replaced. Club membership had declined. The most recent president had resigned after just 22 days in the role and the club very nearly died.
It was the indefatigable Hans Gamper who saved Barcelona from extinction. He became president in December 1908 and it was mainly thorough his drive and leadership that the club was put back on its feet. He recruited new players, raised funds from local businessmen and greatly expanded the membership of the club which by 1922 had increased to over 10,000 people.
Gamper had a high regard for British footballers and despite some opposition, he turned to England to recruit coaches who could improve the club’s fortunes on the field. Not all were successful, but in 1917 he appointed John Greenwell as the club’s manager and first official coach. Greenwell had first been brought to Barcelona from Crook Town by Gamper as a player, and had played 88 games for the club, scoring ten goals.
Greenwell proved to be an outstanding coach with what was described as a great footballing mind. He coached the club from 1917 to 1923, often described as Barcelona’s first golden age. During that period Barcelona won five Catalonia Championships and two Copa del Reys. Only one person has acted as manager/coach longer for the club – the legendary Johan Cruyff.
The Witty brothers were pleased to see the revival of the club’s fortunes but it was a rather distant relationship which rarely extended beyond some personal contact with officials and watching the Barcelona team play.
They did briefly become involved inadvertently in a controversy in 1925 which almost brought about the demise of Barcelona. At that time the city had become governed by a military dictator – General Primo de Rivera – who was strongly opposed to Catalan nationalism and had closed down Catalan local government and the use of their language. A football match was arranged between Barca and Jupiter, another Barcelona club, in honour of the Orfeo Catala, a choral society devoted to the work of the Catalan composer and republican, Joseph Clave.
General Rivera allowed the match to go ahead but banned any tribute to the Orfeo Catala, a measure that the large crowd that gathered in the Barca stadium much resented. To help celebrate the occasion, the Witty brothers had arranged for a band of English Royal Marines to perform at half-time. Matters came to a head when the band played the first note of the Spanish national anthem which was immediately drowned by a barrage of whistles and jeers from the stands. Bemused, the band stopped playing, and in desperation then struck up the first bars of the British national anthem, which was greeted with a burst of loud applause.
The authorities took a very dim view of the event and a few days later a military edict was issued fining the Barcelona directors, and closing the stadium and the team for six months. Since this deprived the club of its main source of revenue, it nearly went bankrupt and was saved only by donations from a local bank and from its loyal supporters. However, the biggest and most cruel blow of all was that Hans Gamper was accused of promoting Catalan nationalism and expelled from Spain.
He returned to Switzerland but his business interests ran into trouble. He suffered from depression and committed suicide in July 1930, aged just 52, and there was a massive show of public mourning at his funeral. Recognition of his services from FC Barcelona would come later. The Joan (Hans) Gamper Trophy was created in 1966 in his memory and is contested each year by several European teams. And on 1 June 2006, Barcelona inaugurated their new sports club in Gamper’s name. Located on the outskirts of Barcelona, the centre hosts training and competitions between the different FC Barcelona football teams.
During the 1930s Arthur Witty and his son Frederick busied themselves in building up the family business as traders and helped introduce well-known names such as Cadbury, Johnnie Walker, Unilever and Bovril into the Spanish market. That period was marked by some vicious power struggles between rival political factions in Barcelona, causing economic disruption and high unemployment. Unfortunately, after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), the Witty family business was no longer able to trade and Barcelona became a most dangerous place to live in.
The city was the scene of extreme violence as vicious infighting broke out between rival political factions, communists, anarchists and other revolutionary groups, as well as by the indiscriminate bombing of the city by the nationalist forces of General Franco. Many citizens and foreigners fled the city, including Ernest Witty, his wife Isobel and their two daughters, Pearlie and Queenie.
At the time Ernest was running his own firm as an agent for a London firm of sports goods, Slazenger, but was advised by the British Consul in Barcelona to leave the country. He later recalled that they left all their belongings behind knowing that all would soon be plundered and the family was left penniless.
‘We were,’ he said, ‘taken by a destroyer, HMS Gypsy, to Marseilles and from there by land to this dear civilised country, where at all events we are safe.’ [Derby Daily Telegraph, 1 August 1936]
Arthur Witty and his wife Hilda stayed on long enough in the city to rally support for British citizens. Unfortunately the Witty family business suffered badly during the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, and the company was forced to cease trading. Everything had to start afresh after hostilities were over
After the Second World War, Arthur Witty was able to restore the company’s reputation as a shipping agent. It continued to trade until 2008 when a steep decline in the shipping line business unfortunately forced Arthur’s grandson, Michael Witty, to close it. Arthur was awarded the MBE for his service as president of the British Chamber of Commerce in Spain. He died in 1969 aged 91 in Barcelona. His wife, Hilda, whom he had married in 1906, also received an MBE for her work in the Women’s Voluntary Corps in England during the Second World War. She died aged 96 in Barcelona. They had four children.
During the Second World War, Arthur’s son, Frederick, joined the Allied cause and was awarded the MBE for his services. He was later to follow in his father’s footsteps by also becoming president of the British Chamber of Commerce in Spain and being awarded the OBE for his work and his services to the British community in Catalunya.
Ernest and his wife, Isobel, and their two daughters remained in England after the Second World War. Unhappily, Isobel died shortly after the war. Around the same time, Ernest’s tennis equipment business ran into difficulties and he was forced to find jobs elsewhere. Ernest died in England in 1969. (“I am grateful to Michael Witty for the above information regarding the Witty company, and the fortunes of the Witty family.”)
Barcelona are well known for being a family football club with strong kinship ties and in which successive or generations of fathers and sons, cousins, relations and notably brothers, have played important parts both on and off the field. It is also reckoned that England has provided the club over the years with more players than any other foreign country. It is pleasing that these traditions can be traced right back to the early years of such a famous club, and in particular to the role played by those two Englishmen, the brothers Arthur and Ernest Witty. Although their contribution was relatively fleeting and not so great as Gamper’s, their importance as pioneers of football in Europe should not be underestimated.