The Invincibles, the Spice Boys, Red Imps… Each football team has a special nickname. In the case of FC Barcelona (A.K.A Dream Team or Barça), it is culés. You’ve seen this word in several news but, have you ever thought about its origins?
To find out you need to travel a hundred years ago. Futbol Club Barcelona was founded in November 29, 1899, a time when this sport was barely known in Catalonia. In 1909 they bought their first football field at carrer Industria (Grà cia district). It was known as La Escopidora (the spittoon) because it was so small that…well, you can imagine what happened. That also made difficult to have a sit to enjoy the game.
From 1920 an on, FC Barcelona took a brutal leap in victories and followers. They won two Copas de España (Spanish Cups) and three Pyrenees Cup.That shot up the associates ciffre to 3,000. As a consequence, it was more and more difficult to enjoy the matches. The ones who didn’t find a place to sit used to go to the Canaletes kiosk to be aware of the results.
The field had a two-story grandstand and several rows of benches. When there were more fans than sits, they sat on the wall that surrounded the field. In this way, pedestrians outside the field came across with a row of asses . The Catalan word to refer to this honorable part is cul and its plural would be culs . Spanish media popularized the culés expression, and that’s how it stayed. There is another theory linking term to a supposed cabbage crops (col in Spanish and Catalan) before the arrival of football.  Undoubtedly, we prefer the culos theory.
