FCBARCELONA.CAT

08.08.2007 22:04

A life dedicated to Barça

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Nicolau Casaus de la Fuente y Jené was born in Mendoza (Argentina) on February 12, 1913.

His father, José, was the son of Lora del Río (Seville) and came from a military family. His grandfather fought in the Cuban War and his uncle died in combat in Africa. His mother, Gertrudis, was born in Cervera (Lleida) and was an accomplished pianist although she had to support her modest family by doing other less glamorous jobs. His parents had two children (Lola and Josep) when they decided to emigrate to Argentina, where Nicolau Casaus was born along with his brother Robert, who died early aged just 16.

In 1918, at the end of the First World War, the Casaus family returned to Catalonia to live in Igualada, after the publishing industry that his father had set up in Argentina failed to prosper.

His first contact with football

It was in Igualada where Nicolau Casaus first discovered football, and from a young age he played for the Ateneu club in Igualada. He saw his first Barça match aged 9 years and got to speak in person to somebody who later became both his idol and intimate friend: Josep Samitier.

His first job was at a printing works in Igualada in 1927, earning five pesetas a week, but he also had time to go to school for two hours a day.

Founder of the 'Penya Germanor'

Casaus founded one of the very first Barça supporters clubs, a group of friends that were called the Penya Germanor. From Igualada he organised transport to get to Les Corts and also to some away games. In the 1951-52 season, he drove as far as Tetuan to celebrate a Barça win in the league a week earlier.

Aged 24, and in 1937, he married his first wife Pepita Masip Sabat, the daughter of a textile manager in Igualada and also the cousin of one of the finest right wingers FC Barcelona ever had, Estanislau Basora.

Nationality and the Civil War

The Spanish Civil War took Igualada by surprise, at a time when Casasus was working in the family’s textile business. He attempted to sign up for the Republican cause, but he was officially a foreigner (although he had been registered in the Mendoza consulate, the papers were never sent to Spain), and he was forced to emigrate instead. Casaus was heartbroken, because two friends of his who he had encouraged to join the war against fascism were considered fit for battle.

Although he could not go to the front, he played an active role in the defence of the Republic by writing articles against General Franco and his troops on a weekly basis in the “Horitzons” magazine. He would suffer because of this and when the Nationalists won the war in 1939he was arrested at his Igualada home by Franco’s police force. He was officially condemned as a “red, separatist and supporter of the rebellion”.

Sentenced to death

After being submitted to a War Council, he was sentenced to death for 72 days but eventually got five years in prison instead, where he was put in charge of the prison store. “This way I won’t starve” he once said. His memoirs also tell us that it was here that he started smoking cigars and sleeping the siesta. He only thanked the Francoist police for one thing, he was never tortured.

Once he was freed, his family moved to Carrer Bailen in Barcelona, where he and a friend had Samitier’s financial support (he would never forget the loan of 400,000 pesetas they received) to thank for helping them set up a spinning company.

But as a former convict, Casaus had lost his rights as a citizen, and he would not recover them until 1975, and so he was unable to join the FC Barcelona board of directors, despite having collaborated in several projects and being one of the masterminds behind the Penya Solera. Although he was not one of its founders, he was its president for 18 years. He was also in charge of the Social Commission that oversaw the construction of the Camp Nou on September 24, 1957. On March 18, 1954, he was one of a group of Barça supporters who carried the first stone from the old Les Corts stadium to the site of the Camp Nou.

He would have further problems with the Franco regime, twice getting away with threats of deportation, for he was still officially classed as a foreigner. His first crime was to use Catalan in a public speech, while his second was to remove the portrait of Franco in the entrance to the Penya Solera. Samitier, a player Franco felt deep admiration for and considered a friend, and the academic José María Cossío, were the men who stepped in to support Casaus and managed to ensure that he was able to remain in the country.

Opponent and candidate

He was a militant Barça supporter and voiced his strong opposition over the years to two of the club’s presidents, Enric Llaudet (1961-68) and Agustí Montal (1969-77), something he would go on to reiterate in later years.

His wife died in a traffic accident in 1975, and five years later he married for the second time to Conchita Sanfeliu Malet.

In 1978 he ran for president of FC Barcelona in representation of the club’s historic past. He was beaten by Josep Lluís Núñez, but the winner offered him a position as vice president, which Nicolau Casaus accepted and he went on to work in the social area and for the supporters clubs, parts of the club with which he always maintained a close link.