When Jimmy Burns takes his seat at Celtic Park tomorrow night, it will be his first visit to a Scottish football stadium.

He will not arrive as a novice, since an interest in the Old Firm rivalry means that he is familiar with the surroundings, but Burns does bring a different perspective. He sees, for instance, the similarities in the relationship between the two major Glasgow clubs and how Real Madrid and Barcelona interact, but could never envisage either of those teams suffering the same fate as Rangers. "They're just too big politically and economically, to fail," he says.

In the contemporary football landscape, there ought to be no reflections of the Scottish game in Spain, where the aesthetic values of Barcelona's play, the grandeur of Real Madrid's obsession with glory, and the sudden emergence of a haughty self-confidence in the Spanish national team, are cherished. Two leading clubs might normally dominate La Liga, almost to the exclusion of all else, but that is not unique to the two countries. Scotland and Spain are, in truth, contrasts in a football sense.

Burns has chronicled the narratives of Spanish football, from his brilliant and comprehensive study, Barca, to his latest book, La Roja, about the national team. He was born in Madrid, to a Scottish father, and lives for much of the year in London, but it is Spanish football that he is immersed in. That knowledge reaches beyond the current understanding that Barcelona's style, the competitive tension between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, and the sweeping accomplishment of Spain, represent peaks in the game. Yet Burns applies a historian's attention to detail to his understanding of football, and he recognises that Spain is not aloof to developments in Scotland.

"This [Celtic v Barca] game is taking place against the backdrop of Catalonia and Scotland being immersed in the independence debate," he says. "The agreement that was reached by Alex Salmond and David Cameron, to go ahead with the [Scottish independence] referendum on the terms agreed, has been picked up by the Catalans as an example of a democracy at work and the way forward for them. They're faced with a completely different kind of attitude from the Madrid government, which doesn't want to negotiate and refuses to contemplate allowing the Catalans their right to self-determination. What the Catalans are saying is that this is one democracy and we're living in an undemocratic situation."

In Spain, as in Scotland, the leading football clubs are institutions that exist outside the confines of the game itself. Barca and Real Madrid, like Rangers and Celtic, carry social, cultural and political influence. When Sandro Rosell, the Barca president, attended a recent rally about Catalonian independence, he stressed that his presence was as a private citizen not a representative of the club. Yet Barca have always been a strong expression of the Catalonian identity, and a source of self-determination during times of repression.

Rangers and Celtic are not so inextricably linked with the Scottish independence movement, yet both clubs harbour pressing ambitions to move out of Scottish football, most likely to England but perhaps a European league, so that they can grow and compete at a higher level. While the game can be symbolic of certain attitudes, it tends to generate contradictions that politics would rather avoid.

"There are legitimate questions to ask about what is Barca today," Burns says. "Is it a club whose identity is tied up with Catalonia, or is it a club that tries to balance two aspects of reality: one, the Catalan tradition, and two, that it's a huge multi-national operation? There must be people within the club who are worried about a Catalan independent state and Barcelona being forced into a situation that wouldn't serve its financial interests. It could, for instance, risk being thrown out of the Spanish league, or some of its players might not be able to play for [Spain]. Other people argue that it is inconceivable that the Spanish league would allow Barcelona to leave, regardless of the political situation, because without the Clasico you wouldn't have the TV revenues linked to it."

In those who view both clubs as having been underdogs in the past, there is a romanticism to a meeting between Celtic and Barcelona. Yet they are, financially, politically and culturally, part of the establishment of their countries. It might even irk those Celtic fans who believe Rangers were not as harshly treated as they might have been during the summer to hear Burns' views as an outsider who understands how deeply football can affect a community's sense of identity and worth, but also how Barcelona, among other Spanish clubs, can be allowed to leave huge tax bills unpaid.

"There's a completely different culture [in Spain]," he says. "The Spaniards might be good at lots of things, but they're not good at paying taxes or collecting them. Spanish football is really quite corrupt, a lot of the big transfer deals involve off-shore companies and intermediaries and nobody examines them. The tradition of the Anglo-Saxon media's probing and investigative journalism doesn't exist in Spain. No-one has done a huge investigation on the finances of Real Madrid or Barcelona."

*Jimmy Burns will be at Waterstones in Argyle Street, Glasgow, today at 7pm to discuss Spanish football and sign copies of his book, La Roja.