Aside from Groucho Marx, most people want to belong to something. We need community, support and a place where ‘everyone knows your name’. Much of our identity is connected to the groups we belong to, whether that be our immediate family, a church, the local watering-hole or a Meetup.com group. Foreigners in Barcelona use clubs as easy diving boards from which to jump into their new adopted home. It’s a fast way to meet people and, depending on the club, to get to know Catalan and Spanish culture. However, while being a ‘joiner-in’ is still popular with many people, the type of club they sign up with and their reasons for doing so are gradually changing, a phenomonen that Barcelona is witnessing at first hand.
During the last century, foreign and local clubs, societies, asociaciones and centres flourished in the city. Opened just after World War One, the now defunct British Club was one of the first foreign resident organisations to set up a headquarters in central Barcelona in an elegant entresuelo on Plaça Uquinaona.
The reason for the club’s foundation is clear: from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, many British businesses were established in Barcelona and, as a result, many nationals from the UK emigrated to the city. Lloyds Bank was here, as were many British insurance companies and textile factories, like Scottish jacket-maker Fabra Coats, while English shipping agents were also heavily involved in the Catalan textile industry. Though British businesses employed Spaniards, the upper-management was always from the UK. With so many Brits about, the British Chamber of Commerce was set up in 1908, and the British Club followed shortly thereafter.
“All the new ex-pats who came into Barcelona, the British ones, almost automatically joined the British Club because it was a little bit of home,” explained John Connolly, former British Society president, describing the Club’s atmosphere in the Twenties.
At the Club, Britons could play bridge, have tea, play snooker or cards and peruse the English library. Miles away from Britain, with limited Castilian and no modern-day resources such as Easyjet, Skype and MSN messenger, the foreign residents of 100 years ago may have suffered more severe homesickness than today’s new arrivals and, if they did, the British Club was there to see them through it with gin and tonics and traditional British events like celebrating the Queen’s Birthday and whisky tasting.
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