Principat Blaugrana maps 125 years of FC Barcelona–Andorra ties

Journalist Àlex Terés reconstructs more than a century of sporting, social and commercial ties between FC Barcelona and Andorra in Principat Blaugrana, drawing on archival photographs, unpublished documents, interviews and local testimony. The book expands from early photographic traces — images of Ladislao Kubala in the 1950s and a 1960s Catalan Football Federation booklet with Andorran adverts — into a sustained account of connections spanning roughly 125 years.

Terés traces the roots of barcelonisme in Andorra to early 20th‑century migration to Barcelona, wartime exiles during the Spanish Civil War, and the principality’s historically limited national football infrastructure. He documents personal ties involving early figures such as Paulino Alcántara, Josep Samitier and the Gonzalvo brothers, and follows later links with Johan Cruyff and other club personalities. The book recalls the first team’s pre‑season stays in Andorra in the 1980s — years that brought coaches and players including Menotti, Terry Venables, Maradona, Bernd Schuster and others — and shows how those visits reinforced local affinities and sporting networks.

Principat Blaugrana goes beyond men’s football to record Andorran involvement across Barça’s sections — notably rugby, hockey, athletics and basketball — and highlights the number of athletes from the principality who have been linked to the club and the Masia. Terés compiles more than a hundred direct testimonies and references over 200 names connected to both club and country, presenting the material as a cultural and social history of how a football club became woven into a small nation’s identity.

A central civic episode in the book and in recent events is the recovery of the sculpture Gol, by Pilar Riberaygua. Donated by the Penya Blaugrana del Principat to mark a supporters’ meeting in 1986, the piece was displayed for years in the gardens of the Casa de la Vall before being removed and kept in a Consell General warehouse. Terés located the sculpture, coordinated with the Comú of Andorra la Vella and the penya, and helped restore and reinstall it at the Joan Samarra Vila municipal stadium, returning a public symbol of the club–country bond.

The book intersperses sporting history with commercial and logistical episodes uncovered in archival research. One striking finding describes how part of the lighting system for Les Corts, Barça’s former stadium, reached Barcelona via Andorra in the difficult postwar years, illustrating the principality’s trade links and capacity to procure equipment in Europe despite material shortages and restrictions.

The publication and the sculpture’s reinstallation were focal points of a visit to Andorra la Vella by FC Barcelona president Joan Laporta. At the Joan Samarra stadium Laporta was received by the city’s consuls, Sergi González and Olalla Losada, and joined by Penya representatives and members of the club delegation including Josep Ignasi Macià, Enric Masip and Jordi Finestres. The delegation later visited Casa Comuna and dined with local businesspeople before taking part in a public conversation at UNNIC’s Green Box, moderated by RTVA journalist Joel Romero, where Laporta and Terés discussed the historical ties between the club and the principality.

Laporta highlighted what he described as “historical, geographic, cultural and linguistic” ties between Barça and Andorra, praised the Penya Blaugrana del Principat — founded in 1961 and among the club’s oldest international supporters’ groups — and noted that Andorra registers around 801 official FC Barcelona members, a figure often cited as the highest number of members per inhabitant of any country. Local officials and penya leaders recalled memories of 1980s training camps and player visits as evidence of sustained, multifaceted links.

Published by Llamps i Trons, Principat Blaugrana frames these episodes as part of a broader exercise in collective memory: an account of how migration, personal ties, commercial exchanges, sporting encounters and civic memorials helped weave FC Barcelona into the social fabric of a small nation.