Basque Country Football Team (1937-1939)

The Euzkadi football team was an initiative taken by the Basque government in March 1937. It had two objectives: to attract more international support and raise funds for Basque refugees, most of whom were children who had been sent to other countries as the rebel troops advanced. Although it was formed as a combined squad and not as a true national team, it acted as one, as the colours of its uniform (red, white and green, taken from the Basque flag the ikurriña) and its emblem, that of the Basque government, attest.

Some 60 per cent of the players came from Athletic Club, a Bilbao team. The wartime situation largely explains this decision. By March 1937, the territory controlled by the Basque Government was limited exclusively to Vizcaya. As a result, the rest of the players came from local teams still under Republican control, with the exception of five players who had been caught away from their respective teams by the uprising (two from Real Madrid, two from Real Unión, and one from Barcelona).

The first match was played in the French capital against Racing de Paris on April 26, the same day that the German planes bombed Guernica. The team played a number of friendly matches in France, achieving good results both on the sporting and diplomatic fronts. The Francoist occupation of Bilbao in June 1937 caught the team in the Soviet Union, where they had traveled after playing several matches in Czechoslovakia and Poland. Stalin’s regime, the main international supporter of the Republican government, paid more attention the greatest attention to the tour and provided the highest level of comfort, despite the fact that most of the players were declared Catholics, did not share the Bolshevik ideal.

The squad effectively fulfilled its sports-propaganda mission. It is no surprise that the president of Athletic Club and prominent PNV militant, Manuel de la Sota, lauded the players as "gudaris, the soldiers coming from the trenches (...) [concerned] for the freedom of their homeland through sports."

Devoted to their cause, all but three members of the expedition who returned to Spain set out on a difficult trip to America in October 1937. The first friendly matches in Mexico and Cuba went smoothly, but starting in February 1938, challenges began to mount. FIFA, the international governing body of football, blocked the five scheduled friendlies in Argentina; the financial situation became unsustainable after three months without competition; and disagreements between players and management intensified. The crisis was temporarily resolved thanks to the Mexican authorities, who allowed the team to participate in the country's official tournaments. In the 1938-1939 season, the Basque team finished second in the Mexican Major League. 

In the end, the military victory of the insurgents blurred the original mission of the expedition, which by then was mired in deep contradictions, internal disputes, and financial difficulties. After unsuccessful attempts to extend the tour to the United States and Canada, the team was dissolved in August 1939.  Most of its members remained in exile.

EZA