They were overcome by military pressure - did General Franco

The Clasico has a uniquelyrich and varied history. From extraordinary exhibitionstocontroversial clashes,Real Madrid against Barcelona, football's most famousfixture, has seen it all.

In short, the Clasico never fails to generate talking points. However, there are some things that some people do not want to remember. The biggest ever scoreline between Graham Gano Jerseys the two sides is a particularly touchy subject in both Catalunya and Madrid.

OnJune 13, 1943, Real beat Barca 11-1in the second leg of theirCopa del Generalisimo (the Copa del Reyhad been renamed in honour of Spain's ruling fascist leader, Francisco Franco) semi-final tie.

"Real Madrid never show off about that match," Joan Barau, a historian specialising in Barcelona's history, tellsGoal. "Basically, because thatwasn't a football match."

Barca had won the first leg3-0 and travelled to the EstadioChamartin (Real's Julian Love Jerseys home before the Santiago Bernabeu) hoping to progre s to the final.

However, Barau says, "That Real Madrid turned the tie around isn't surprising. What is surprising is the result, which perfectly explains that it was, inreality, a humiliation;a spectacle more akin to what could be seen in a Roman circus than at a football match."

In the first game, Les Corts (Camp Nou's predece sor) had received Real amid a tenseatmosphere, with the end of the Civil Warjust four years earlier still fresh in the memory.

"There was a Law of Political Responsibilities, by which anyone who was not loyal at the beginning of the regime was deemedsuspicious," Barau explains.

But Barca's fans "were wound up by Real Madrid's rough-house tactics", which the Catalan club's players also took exception to during a second leg which was played out in a particularly toxic atmosphere in the Spanish capital.

Indeed, Barau says that the pro-Madrid media had written a number of scurrilous stories in the lead-up Blake Martinez Jerseys to the second leg which generated "such hostility" at Chamartin thatthe visitors did not dare participate in the proceedings. As a result, by half-time, Real were already 8-0 up, and Barca a man down, following the contentious dismi sal of Benito Garcia.

According to the widow of Barca goalkeeper Lluis Miro (in conversation years later with the journalist Xavier G. Luque), the Madrid forwards had kept pushing as if the game were still level.

So, Miro gave them the ball and told them to score if they wanted, given they seemed so keen to publicly humiliate their opponents for their perceived insolence. The Real strikersrefused that offer, but that still did not prevent the most one-sided result in the history of the Clasico: 11-1 to Madrid.

"It is remembered as the match of shame," Barau explains. "A result that Real Madrid have never boasted aboutbecause it hides ones of the worst ghosts from Spain's darkest days."

Several members of the Barca squad and coaching staff have subsequently claimed that they were threatened by police before the Azeez Ojulari Jerseys kick-off and that they had been left so disgusted by what unfolded in the opening 45 minutes, that they did not want to go back out for the second half.

Legend has it that the Spanish director of state securitythreatened them into doing so but Barau says,"That's a story that nobody has ever been able to prove and there is not a single member of the Barcelona team left now.

"But it's obvious that in order to score 11 goals, you have to play against a rival that is absent, because it is not something normal at all."

There were, however, thinly Eli Manning Jerseys veiled threatsin the pro-Franco pre s in the build-up to the second leg in Madrid.

"Those 'warnings' made some of the Barcelona players wonder if it was worth putting up any resistance at all," Barau says, "and, in the end, they didn't.

"Because the game was to be much more than a sporting duel. It was all about teaching Barcelona a le son and humiliating a club like no otherthat representeda way of thinking differently, much closer to the ideas of Catalanism."

It may seem strange for the Barca side to have buckled under such pre sure. They were, after all, long used to allsorts of insults, with former player Mingo Balmanya recalling that they were labelled"Catalan dogs" at many other away grounds.

However, Barau says, "In that tie, at the Bernabeu , Barcelona were overcome by military pre sure and people close to the Falange (the nation'sFascist and National Syndicalist political party), which heated the atmosphere a great deal."

So, perhaps thiswas this match that made the Clasico such a politically charged fixture, which it will be again on Saturday, with Real and Barca set to meet at the Bernabeu against the backdrop of the Catalan elections and the contentious i sue of the region's independence.

Happily, though, there is no chance of even the hint of political interference this time around and the Daniel Jones Jerseys hope will be that these two great footballingrivals will produce a game that fans on both sides will remember fondly for years to come.

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