Alvaro Rodríguez Díaz

Football fan groups in Andalusia.

The Spanish have a very negative opinion of soccer ultras, the word used in Spanish to call hardcore soccer fans. The point I present here is that all this is just a social symptom. The stadium stands for a social representation of the different social strata that people occupy in society. In Spain, the soccer scene is one of the few places where some young people play the role of protagonist, despite their fragile social background. The fieldwork is focussed on Andalusia, in the south of Spain.The Spanish have a very negative opinion of soccer ultras, the word used in Spanish to call hardcore soccer fans. The point I present here is that all this is just a social symptom. The stadium stands for a social representation of the different social strata that people occupy in society. In Spain, the soccer scene is one of the few places where some young people play the role of protagonist, despite their fragile social background. The fieldwork is focussed on Andalusia, in the south of Spain.

DA DEMOCRATIZAÇÃO DO ESPORTE À HEGEMONIA DOS MERCADOS: O CONTEXTO EUROPEU E O CASO ESPANHOL

The sport system of democratic countries is in crisis. This is because the welfare state, on which many public sport policies are based, has been superseded by a new cycle of neoliberal hegemony. To illustrate this reality, we focus on the case of Spain. It becomes evident that civil society has a low representation in political decision making in sport matters and that organized sport has failed to fulfill a social function, being confined to the interests of economic agents. This article requests that social sciences take a critical stance with regards to this reality.