ABSTRACT
This chapter first considers footballs emergence in the Basque Country. It then discusses the key aspects defining the Athletic-Real dichotomy: from the civil war of the 1930s, to the transition to democracy in the late 1970s. Olazabel notes that the relationship between football and the armed struggle was ambivalent; it was based on informal connections within the broad social compass of the clubs support, without official endorsement from either Athletic or Real. In the 1970s and 1980s splits occurred in the PNV to define alternative voices of Basque nationalism: from the emergence of Batasuna to Basque solidarity and the growth of left-wing movements. These developments ushered in the paradoxes and ambivalences of the constitutional settlement of 1978, revealing the pragmatism and underpinning the rubric of Spain's fledgling democracy. Finally, the chapter evaluates the relationship between football and the resurgent regionalism of the 1980s in the Spain of the autonomous communities.
