It’s not worth being angry. Few phrases have been able to mark the childhood of Galician boys and girls who love football more. This unwritten rule, which the goalkeeper on duty clung to to beg his rivals for mercy, perfectly reflects the narrow line that separates football from language. In this case, the Galician one.
From those rebumbios in which two stones served as imaginary goals, to the weekend afternoons and nights, first listening to Galicia in goals on Radio Galega before watching the summaries of the day on the TVG program En Xogo. In the streets and homes of Galicia, or football also Galician fala, and its greatest exponent, and LaLiga Santander club, RC Celta, has been showing off its afouteza for years, a term that has not only become the watchword of the club, but has even become the Word of the Year in 2017 according to the Royal Galician Academy.
Months before, and as its anthem says, the motto “Afouteza e corazón” began to gain strength with the team’s qualification for the UEFA Europa League semi-finals. But especially, with the subsequent stay in LaLiga Santander two seasons ago. “When everything seems lost, that courage and heart emerge to, at least, fight until the last moment,” says Maruxa Magdalena, Marketing Director of the Vigo club.
From a more institutional point of view, the club’s identification with the Galician language “has been strengthened in recent years” in which Galician has become a very present language in RC Celta, “both in the stadium and in his communication with the fans.”
So much so, that one more year, the club actively participates in the Día das Letras Galegas, which curiously in this edition is dedicated to an illustrious Vigo native, the poet and translator Xela Arias. “The club pays special attention to this celebration every year, but this season we wanted to take it a step further by making it visible internationally,” she explains.
And what better showcase than the Camp Nou to do so? In the duel that faced a light blue team, which is experiencing a spectacular end to the season under the guidance of Argentine coach ‘Chacho’ Coudet, against an FC Barcelona in need of victory to continue aspiring to the closest league title among the major competitions in the continent, the RC Celta footballers warmed up with t-shirts with football terms in Galician instead of their names.
For example, Iago Aspas, looked gray; Denis Suárez, singer; and Nolito, punteirolo. All this, after throughout the week members of the Celtic squad explained on the club’s official networks the meaning of the words of a contest with which fans were able to test their football lexicon in Galician.
In the same way that the commitment to the prolific A Madroa youth academy “facilitates and enhances the identification between club and fans”, the language is also part of their daily life, as some players from the house like goalkeeper Sergio Álvarez, or as historic club footballers like Nacho and coaches like Fernando Castro Santos did years ago.
At the beginning of the last century, RC Celta was born with the intention of becoming the Galician club that could face the powerful Catalan, Madrid and Basque teams. It was then when, as a result of the merger of two city teams such as Fortuna and Sporting, the “Club Celta” – a name that ended up being imposed on others such as Breogán or Club Galicia – made some of the symbols its own, such as the cross of Santiago that it shows on its shield, and the colors of the Galician flag.
The new Celta soon became an ambassador for their land and one of the favorite teams of the large Galician community, also on the other side of the Atlantic. So much so that currently, very few LaLiga Santander and LaLiga SmartBank clubs can boast of having so many fans on the American continent.
Every day, their LaLiga Santander matches are followed religiously live –regardless of the time difference– in the hundreds of bars and restaurants run by Galicians from Mexico to Argentina. Like the one at the Veracruz hotel in Panama, where every weekend, a parish of faithful gathers to enjoy their Celtiña and a good portion of octopus á feira: “Coma semper, o de semper… Hala Celta!” Listen, as soon as the ball starts rolling. As if they were in their Abanca Balaídos of the soul and without homesickness or distance mattering this time.
Thousands of kilometers away, from the stadium’s public address system, Antón López coined this and other proclamations between 1980 and 2008 that, in addition to being part of the collective imagination of Celticism, served to promote the use of the Galician language. His was the idea of ??playing “Os Pinos”, the Galician anthem, during the 1982 World Cup; as well as other pieces from the popular songbook such as “Pousa, pousa” and, of course, “A Rianxeira”, which accompanied that EuroCelta of the late nineties in the unforgettable defeats of Benfica (7-0) and Zinedine’s Juventus Zidane and Alessandro del Piero (4-0).
But if one song stands out above the rest in the celestial repertoire, both for its symbolism and its meaning, that is the “Foliada do Celta”. Composed in the late 1970s by the Vigo group A Roda, the “Foliada” carries out, with the classic Galician retranca, a sociological study of the different profiles of fans who gather every game in Balaídos: from the popular and lively stands of Rio, passing through the most critical fans of Tribuna; for those from Marcador – “those who got the most angry” ?; and those “who never protest” located in the Gol stands.
Because like any good stadium worth its salt, Balaídos also has its own ecosystem, where the clubs and groups of seareiros also live their passion for RC Celta in Galician. On the bench, famous entertainment groups such as Barullo noarea have given way to others who are more culturally restless, such as Colectivo Nós, which pays tribute in its name and spelling to the group of authors who revolutionized Galician literature. Exactly a century ago, the Castelao, López Cuevillas, Risco and Otero Pedrayo began to lay the foundations for a narrative and poetry that celebrates its big day every May 17. And RC Celta could not be oblivious to this issue.
RC Celta was also the protagonist of the first radio broadcast of football entirely in Galician. It was on May 1, 1983, when Radio Nacional de España decided to broadcast a key match for celestial salvation in the new José Zorrilla stadium in Valladolid. The narration was carried out by the announcer Juan Barro Hermida, who in this way picked up the baton of the first chronicles in Galician on the Vigo Radio Popular, laying the foundations for the subsequent narrations and carousels on Galician public radio and television. Thanks to precedents like these, almost four decades later terms such as malleira, padiola or curruncho are already part of the usual vocabulary of fans, not only of RC Celta, but also of CD Lugo, currently in LaLiga SmartBank, the historic RC Deportivo and the rest of the Galician clubs.
“The appearance of these programs focused on all Galician football helped a lot to spread the Galician language.” Hence, the club considers it “a source of pride” to have “so many first team players who can speak to the media in this language” and “a joy”, which shows that “the enormous success of our youth team contributes to the use of the Galician in the world of football.”
Outside Galicia, and after the first precedents of sports broadcasts in Catalan and Basque in the 1920s and 1930s, literature – the Athletic Club Foundation, for example, has its own reading club in Basque and organizes the meetings literary Letrak eta Futbola –, and football have also shared great moments.
And journalists like the Catalan Joaquim Maria Puyal ? with famous phrases that are already part of the history of sports journalism such as his “Urruti, t’estimo!” –, opened new doors. So much so that, since 2017, Asturias public radio has also begun to broadcast the LaLiga SmartBank derbies between Real Sporting and Real Oviedo in Asturian.
All this on the occasion of a Galician Literature Day that could not come at a more exciting time for LaLiga Santander and, especially, for RC Celta after an extraordinary comeback in the standings.
