FC Barcelona

Fútbol Club Barcelona (in Catalan: Futbol Club Barcelona), popularly known as Barça, is a multi-sport institution based in Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain). It was founded as a football club on 29 November 1899 and officially registered on 5 January 1903.

Both the club and its supporters are given the nickname "culers" (pronounced culés), and also, in reference to its colours, "azulgranas" or "blaugranas". Its supporter service office serves people in the three official languages of the club, which are Catalan, Spanish and English.

At an institutional level it is one of the four professional football clubs in the country whose legal entity is not that of a sociedad anónima deportiva (SAD, sports public limited company), since its ownership lies with its more than 143,000 members. It shares another exception with Athletic Club and Real Madrid in having played without interruption in the top category of the Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional, the Primera División of Spain, since its establishment in 1929. In it, it holds the honours of having been the first champion in the competition's history, of being the second club with the most titles, and of having the highest points total in a single edition.

Adding up national and international tournaments, it is the second most decorated Spanish club; at national level it dominates the honours list with seventy-seven championships, and at international level it holds twenty-two trophies, placing it second in Europe. It holds the same position as the multi-sport club with the most European cups counting all its professional sections —behind CSKA Moscow— with 48.

According to the statistics compiled by the IFFHS, F. C. Barcelona is the best European and world football team of the first and second decades of the 21st century, and leads the global ranking of the century with 5,228 points, a margin of 365 points over the second-placed side (Real Madrid C. F.). It is also the football team that has appeared most often on the podiums of the FIFA World Player (19) and the Ballon d'Or (34).

One of the main characteristics of F. C. Barcelona is its multi-sport character. It is distinguished as one of the most decorated multi-sport institutions, among which its football, basketball, handball and hockey sections stand out, all of them with a wide European record of honours. It is the first European club to be continental champion in both the men's and women's branches, and the first to achieve a treble with both. Likewise, the Olympic medallists who have represented the blaugrana institution have won eleven golds, twenty-three silvers and twenty-eight bronzes in the various sporting disciplines.

Fifteen former members of the club have been inducted into the International Football Hall of Fame, a project dedicated to preserving the memory of significant figures in the history of football. Among them are: Johan Cruyff, Diego Maradona, Ricardo Zamora, Luís Figo, Ronaldo Nazário, Hristo Stoichkov, Romário, Pep Guardiola, Ronaldinho de Assis, Rivaldo, Carles Puyol, Samuel Eto'o and Xavi Hernández, joined by László Kubala as "dean", or of special significance, and Rafael Márquez as "national".

Another of its distinctive features is its social base of members and supporters. The club has managed to strategically integrate political, religious, cultural and social matters, framed within the sporting sphere, which allows members and supporters to respond to all of the club's social events, to have greater participation in administrative activities, and to strengthen the bonds between the supporters' clubs (peñas). In 2022 it had approximately 143,083 members. There are, in addition, 1,273 Barcelona supporters' clubs spread around the world.

Its two historic rivals are Real Madrid Club de Fútbol, against whom it plays "El Clásico", and Real Club Deportivo Espanyol, whom it faces in the "Barcelona derby", the former being one of the matches of greatest rivalry and interest in world football.

22% of the football fans surveyed in 2021 in Spain by the market and opinion statistics portal Statista name it as the second most popular club. The number of sympathisers favours it having an estimated market value of somewhat over 3.5 billion euros, and in 2020–21 it obtained revenue of 631 million not counting player transfers, although in recent decades it has suffered from heavy debt, estimated at 1.35 billion as of 2021 according to the club, not counting the Espai Barça project, under a loan of 815 million from the investment bank Goldman Sachs. A good indicator of the club's critical economic situation is reflected in its net equity, an indicator of the club's own resources. It is the accounting measure of its value, that is, the funds which, together with external resources, finance its needs for the development of its activities. As of 2021 it is negative by 451 million, while its working capital is negative by 553 million, for which reason it requested a waiver from banks and financial funds at the beginning of 2021 in order to avoid bankruptcy.