FC Barcelona attempt to reclaim the 1937 League title

FC Barcelona are currently on their way to a near-perfect LaLiga victory. With eleven games to go, they remain twelve points ahead of their nearest rivals, Real Madrid, and don’t look like slipping. But the club aspire to more. They want to achieve something truly historic: two league titles in one season. It may sound impossible, but it’s true: they have demanded that the Spanish Federation recognise the League title won during 1937 during the Civil War.

The recognition of that championship is an old claim of the club that until now had fallen on deaf ears. However, just last week, the RFEF recognised Levante’s Cup title of that same year, a fact that represents a legal precedent and one that has reactivated Barcelona’s request, which they have wasted no time in sending to the appropriate organisation.

Both competitions were played with caution and obviously marked by the war, since free movement was impossible in a broken country. The teams from the occupied areas obviously could not go to the Republican zone, or vice versa.

But Barça hang onto the fact that if the Cup has been recognised for Levante, the same must be done with the League. It is a Cup, by the way, that Barça did not play in as at the end of the league season, they went on tour to Mexico, personally invited by the Mexican president, Lázaro Cárdenas, a faithful ally of the Spanish Republic.

Although the Cup kept its name, the League changed and, as it was only played between ten Catalan and Valencian teams, it was simply called the Mediterranean League. Another difference with the Cup is that the trophy won by Levante exists (and was returned to the club by Rubiales last Friday) while the trophy for the League disappeared. It was possibly left among the ruins of the headquarters that the club had in the centre of Barcelona that was destroyed during the bombing of March 8, 1938 by Italian aviation based in Mallorca.

Barça was then run by a committee of employees, who took over management after the execution of Josep Suñol, who today has his name on the box at a Camp Nou that now awaits another trophy.