BarcelonaToni Segarra (Barcelona, 1962) is one of the four outstanding publicists [els altres són José María Piera, César García i Gustavo Martínez] that Espanyol chose to design the latest season ticket campaigns. In an interview with the ARA, he analyzes the club’s identity, the value of its brand and the problems arising from the relationship with its environment.
Is it very common for four reputable publicists from different companies to work together?
– No. They are people I admire and know well. I wish more would happen, but it’s hard for it to happen. And it must be with things of this type, an act of love for these colors. The advantage of working with such good people is that you are pragmatic and when something good comes along you see it quickly. Last year’s phrase from Caesar, from card parakeet, should be our constant message. It’s like saying that paying to be a member and going to the field means you’re a real parakeet. I don’t remember not being at Espanyol. It’s like a curse, a fatality. Espanyol is hard to understand and take even for a 60-year-old parakeet like me. Either they pass it down to you generationally or you have to be weird to learn Spanish voluntarily. It involves wanting to suffer for football, and I don’t know if many people are willing to do that.
This year they have bet to vindicate the value of children who wear an Espanyol shirt.
— We wanted to exalt the wonderful heroism, which is reflected very well in the children. It is a gesture of courage, because you know that a child is exposed and has immense fragility. Because you can imagine him entering a full class where he will be the only one from Espanyol. And the rest will look at him strangely, thinking it’s a provocation. I like this idea, because the children represent in a very dramatic way what it means to be Spanish. I guess it’s because Espanyol opposes an idea that is too majoritarian. I don’t know if there is any other place in the world where the distance between two teams from the same city is so great. I am surprised that it is seen as normal to teach the Barça anthem at school or that the Camp Nou appears in a tourist report on Catalonia. I guess the team-country identification is so powerful that it annoys the rest of us a little.
It is dangerous to focus too much on the idea that we are losers with a certain mystique”
Should we stop selling Espanyol as a wonderful minority?
— No, because we are and will always be a minority. The slogan Wonderful minority represents us well. The concept of wonderful it suits us, it is positive, beautiful and sensitive. We are few, but beautiful. Differentiating ourselves from easy thinking, from what always wins, is a value. However, it is dangerous to focus too much on the idea that we are losers who have a certain mystique. There is a part of Espanyol fans that always refers to a kind of historical greatness that I don’t know exactly where it comes from. In 122 years we have won four Copas del Rey and never won a League. We haven’t even finished above Barça. We are a team looser, a fantastic group of crazy people. Nice and fighting people.
Would the way of advertising the brand of a Spanish winner change much?
— It would change, yes. I find it difficult to become an Atlético de Madrid, but it would be legitimate to think of being a powerful mid-table team, like Villarreal or Real Sociedad, which fights for the Europa League with some regularity and which, in a very good in which the big ones punch, can enter the Champions League. It is a management and long-term problem, of selling well and reinvesting well. I think Chen is trying to do that, but the feeling I get is that Espanyol doesn’t have a clear idea of the club.
Espanyol needs a figure that represents an idea that survives the person and that tells us what we are”
What club idea are you betting on?
— We are a Catalan youth club, because we cannot be anything else, and we need to work on that. Espanyol should be the team with the most Catalans in Primera. It seems obvious what we should be, but we don’t quite believe it because of the reasonable fear of losing. The Athletic Club is the ultimate extreme of having a clear idea. There should be no doubts with the renewals of players like Darder or Melendo, who is blood of our blood. He should have stayed even if it was as a substitute. It would be interesting to take more youngsters from the squad like Melendo and sell them for 30 million, because that is what should make us grow. There is an excessive listening to this contradictory soul of Espanyol, of the permanent complaint. Each parakeet has a different idea of what we should be and the club tries to listen. But who should he pay attention to, if there are 24 different ideas? The club needs to be given direction, as Sevilla have with Monchi, Real Madrid with Di Stéfano or Barça with Cruyff. Espanyol lacks this. We are many things and there is no one figure that represents an idea that survives this person and tells us what we are. Steve Jobs may be dead, but Apple must remain Apple.
Does Chen Yansheng lack a point of sentimental identification to reach the fans?
– It is difficult. The distance is not bad, because it brings pragmatism, but there is no idea that represents us. What Chen bought and what other investors interested in Espanyol see is a distant idea of what we really are. They see a big cosmopolitan city with a club that overwhelms everything and think there is an opportunity for growth. But when you see it up close, Espanyol looks like the seventeenth team in the city. But the same thing happens with Barça as with brands like Danone, El Corte Inglés or Evax, which are so embedded in people’s subconscious that they prevent others from entering the market. In greater Barcelona there could be three or four clubs in Primera. A Rayo Vallecano in Santa Coloma de Gramenet or Badalona.
Is Espanyol underrated in Catalonia?
— The perception is that it has a horrible name. For half of Catalonia, we are fascists. They must find the white-and-blue colors strange, even if they are Roger de Llúria’s. When foreigners created football clubs like Barça, people from the University of Barcelona created the Catalan team and gave it the least appropriate name considering the political drift of this country. At Espanyol we have to give explanations because the name of the club implies things that we are not in reality. 120 years ago that name probably didn’t have the meaning it has now. Dir-se Espanyol i voler ser català és complicat. The name doesn’t help, but you can’t take it away. You have to live with this, even if it means having to make a greater effort than if we called ourselves Catalonia or Europe.
How does the team see it?
— There is a base that is not bad and I hope they don’t spoil it. I understand that maybe RDT will leave. Surely Joselu, who is a fighter, has more Spanish DNA than him, who is a poet. I hope the next RDT is Puado. I am very excited about Diego Martínez. I was surprised that, being the coach of Granada, he went to an exhibition of Ferran Adrià. That means he’s a special guy. Let’s see if the club manages to understand him, as it did not with Rubi. He reminds me of what I think should be Espanyol’s messiah, Ernesto Valverde. He is a sensitive and intelligent guy, who takes pictures and reads, and who, in poetic justice, should bring us some European title after losing the two UEFA finals.
