Barcelona and Real Madrid are supposed to play on the 26th of October at Camp Nou. However, the current situation in Catalonia, with riots everyday trying to burn down the city and causing multiple incidents in the capital, might change the plans. La Liga asked to play at Santiago Bernabéu the first leg, but they are also thinking in changing the date.
On Monday, the Spanish Supreme Court sentenced to jail to some of the politicians involved in the illegal referendum that took part on the 1st of October in 2017. Soon after that, independentist radicals started causing riots all over Barcelona, difficulting the access to the airport, cutting down highways and burning down containers.
At the very same time, FC Barcelona published a press release asking for dialogue and showing their discrepancy about the sentence. Piqué said he was “proud” of his club, and legends like Guardiola and Xavi criticized openly the sentence talking about “shame” or “Spanish is not a democratic country”, even if both played for the Spanish national team and get huge sums of money from non democratic countries.
Now, the radical independentists have called to a general strike on Friday and a huge demonstration on the 26th of October, the day of El Clásico. The government is not sure that they could guarantee the safety of Real Madrid, and they don´t want El Clásico to be a show for the radical independentists.
La Liga and the RFEF (Spanish Football Federation) don’t want El Clásico to be played in that date, and Real Madrid don’t want to play the first leg in their stadium. Therefore, they are talking about moving the clash for the 18th of December, hoping that everything will be calmer in Catalonia.
The club of Barcelona is not helping to calm down the situation in the region, after the press release, especially having in consideration that the sentence was taken by a democratic and public court in an European country, with all the guarantees for the prisoners. Now, Real Madrid, who have never mixed politics and sports, have to suffer the consequences of irresponsible behaviour by the managers of the biggest rival.
