Ultras

How do ultras groups arise in football? Who are the ultras of a team? How do the most radical followers behave? Ultras is a rigorous essay in which Carles Viñas describes the introduction of football and the evolution of radical fan groups in Spain. The first chapter recounts the consolidation of football as a regulated sports discipline, the creation of the first groups of followers and the birth of British hooliganism. The second deals with the importation of the phenomenon of radical fans for state football and the appearance of the first organized groups of fans around the 1982 World Cup. A taxonomy of the pioneering groups gives way to the description of the different stages of the phenomenon. and the incidence of violence in their evolution. The third chapter exposes the links of some of these groups with certain ideological currents and describes the Barcelona case in detail. In the conclusions, he reflects on violence in Spanish football, the various action programs that have been implemented by the institutions and the security forces, and its possible future evolution. It is a text that helps us understand the passions that move the organized radical groups that encourage their teams, as well as their composition and the tensions they cause in our society. An essential work to think about the relationship between soccer, politics and violence, which offers the reader a tool to think about the social function that sport fulfills in our communities.