Futbol Club Barcelona is a sporting institution with an enormous number of members (it is the club with the second largest number of members in the world) and supporters. It was founded as a football club on 29 November 1899 by the Swiss Hans Gamper. FC Barcelona is popularly known as Barça, and its fans as “culers”. One of the main characteristics of FC Barcelona is its multi-sporting character and it is said that it is “more than a club”. There are more than 1800 Barcelona supporters clubs in different parts of the world. Futbol Club Barcelona tops the IFFHS world historical ranking, with 727 points.
The club has also created a foundation (the FC Barcelona Foundation), which, working with UNICEF, supports a programme for the protection and care of children affected by HIV / AIDS. It is the first time that a sports club has been involved in a humanitarian project for children. Barça, besides wearing the UNICEF logo, will pay the organisation 1.5 million euros a year. It also runs other humanitarian projects: in Swaziland it is involved in the construction of schools and sanitation facilities, support for children’s education, nutrition, health and sports, especially for orphans, while the XICS programme maintains 12 help centres for young people with problems, in four continents.
LiberPress Catalonia Award 2009
There is only one Barça, but the club has two sides: a Barça that represents a nation and a language, and another that represents and helps the disadvantaged, the poor and children; one Barça that scores goals, wins trophies and holds up cups, and another that enables children and the needy to win their struggles, that promotes solidarity and humanitarian values, directing them towards disadvantaged regions and defenceless people. It is this second Barça that we want to honour today. We cannot forget the five cups the club has won (hoping there will soon be a sixth) and the great social, emotional, physical and psychological benefits it has brought to Catalans as a nation, but here we want to give recognition to the fact that behind the fantastic team on the pitch there is another fantastic Barça, which has other less visible and less spectacular ambitions and challenges and plays a different kind of match, promoting solidarity and humanitarian values, a match which it never loses.