Barcelona stars walk out to an empty Nou Camp with 98,000 fans stuck outside as home side wear Catalonia flag warm-up shirts

LIONEL MESSI and his Barcelona team-mates walked out in front of a staggering sight – an empty Camp Nou.

On the day when violence and police brutality occurred on the streets of Catalonia, the club made the decision NOT to let 98,000 fans in.

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But the Catalan giants put a day of utter confusion behind them with a routine 3-0 win over Las Palmas.

The game got underway with Messi, Gerard Pique and their superstar team-mates wearing warm-up shirts with the colours of the Catalonia flag on.

Earlier in the day, Pique had cast his vote in a referendum ballot that has not been recognised by the Spanish government.

Hundreds of people, including the elderly and women have been injured as the Spanish police got heavy with what the Madrid government have called an ‘illegal’ Catalan independence vote.

In the city where strikes inside the box are usually celebrated on a football pitch, rather than on a ballot slip, politics and sport was mixed in an atmosphere of total confusion.

FC Barcelona is one of the jewels of the crown of Catalan identity, along with their massive, iconic stadium and brand of silky passing football.

If the fans had been let in, would the unrest have spilt on to the pitch? Probably.

Would football have been the sideshow? Definitely.

The famous bowl of Nou Camp is the biggest stadium in Europe, with a capacity of 98,000 and used to house over 100,000 fans nearly every week.

And in a bizarrely empty ground, a defiant message was spelt in big letters as the world ‘Democracy’ was written on the match scoreboard instead of the team names.

Las Palmas controversially wore a tiny Spanish flag on their jerseys and in a lengthy statement claimed it was to support a unified Spain.

But the move quickly backfired – with their own fans branding them fascists – as the club’s PR stunt came out on social media at the same time as shots of Catalonia residents’ bloodied faces were also being seen by millions.

Over the heads of all the players, without the fans to cover them, were spelt Barca’s famous words “MES QUE UN CLUB.”

It means, of course: “More than a club.”

And after today’s events, for this fantastic organisation, that slogan rings truer than ever.