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More than ever, Barca more than club for Catalans -- as separatist movement heats up
• BARCELONA, Spain (AP) -- Nearly 20 minutes into the latest clash between Spain's most popular football teams, Barcelona's 98,000-seat Camp Nou stadium erupted into a deafening roar. Tens of thousands of Catalans in the city at the heart of their separatist movement chanted in unison: "Independence!"
• More than ever, FC Barcelona, known affectionately as Barca, is living up to its motto of being "more than a club" for this wealthy northeastern region where Spain's economic crisis is fueling separatist sentiment.
• Lifelong Barca club member Enric Pujol was at Camp Nou for this month's game against Real Madrid, the team of Spain's capital. Wearing his burgundy-and-blue Barca jersey, Pujol also held one of the hundreds of pro-independence "estelada" flags, featuring a white star in a blue triangle, which bristled throughout the stands.
• "It was a beautiful emotion to see Camp Nou like that," said Pujol. "Barca is more than a club because of the values it transmits. It is linked to Catalan culture. In this sense it is a club and a social institution that acts like our flag."
• Barca has been seen as a bastion of Catalan identity dating back to the three decades of dictatorship when Catalans could not openly speak, teach or publish in their native Catalan language. Barcelona writer Manuel Vazquez Montalban famously called the football team "Catalonia's unarmed symbolic army."
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A week before Election Day, Obama has an edge in fight for 270 electoral votes needed to win
• AMES, Iowa (AP) -- President Barack Obama is poised to eke out a victory in the race for the 270 electoral votes needed to win re-election, having beaten back Republican Mitt Romney's attempts to convert momentum from the debates into support in all-important Ohio, according to an Associated Press analysis a week before Election Day.
• While the Democratic incumbent has the upper hand in the electoral vote hunt, Romney has pulled even, or is slightly ahead, in polling in a few pivotal states, including Florida and Virginia. The Republican challenger also appears to have the advantage in North Carolina, the most conservative of the hotly contested nine states that will determine the winner.
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