La Liga: Five things we learned from last weeks round of matches

Valencia remain Barca's closest challengers, but Atletico Madrid also continue to stumble as they again failed to find a way past Villarreal to remain fourth.

Barcelona tightened their grip on the La Liga title race as Real Madrid suffered a shock 2-1 defeat at Girona to fall eight points behind their rivals after just 10 games on Sunday.

Barca set a club record start to a La Liga season by racking up 28 points from a possible 30 with victory at Athletic Bilbao thanks as much to goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen as the heroics of Lionel Messi.

Valencia remain Barca's closest challengers, but Atletico Madrid also continue to stumble as they again failed to find a way past Villarreal to remain fourth.

Here, AFP Sports looks at five talking points from the La Liga weekend.

Madrid's problem points, not politics

Real's first trip to Catalonia since a contested October 1 referendum on independence for the deeply divided region to a pro-separatist hotbed in Girona threatened to overshadow the action on the pitch.

Instead, Madrid were met with little more than a sporadic chanting in favour of independence and created their own downfall with a pitiful performance.

Even Real's goal came from a counter-attack after Girona had hit the post as the hosts fully deserved a famous victory in their first ever meeting with Madrid.

As the 13,500 capacity Montlivi danced in delight, that joy travelled the more than 100 kilometres south-west to Barcelona, who are now in a dominant position to wrestle the title back from Real.

Valencia got grit

Valencia had plundered 21 goals in winning five league games in a row before heading north to face Alaves on Saturday lunchtime.

That run is now six consecutive victories, but Marcelino's men showed very different qualities as they had to defend manfully to grind out a 2-1 win in the Basque Country thanks to Rodrigo's second-half penalty.

Los Che now have breathing space in second place and two very winnable games against Leganes and Espanyol to come before hosting Barcelona in a month's time.

Terrific Ter Stegen

Ernesto Valverde returned home on Saturday but didn't leave a parting gift in Bilbao as Barca racked up a 12th win in their last 13 matches without ever coming close to hitting top form.

Messi led the way again offensively as he opened the scoring and helped tee up Paulinho to seal the three points in stoppage time.

However, it is at the other end of the field that Valverde has made a massive difference in his first three months in charge.

Barca have conceded just three times in La Liga, but had to rely on two sensational stops from Ter Stegen with the game delicately poised to deny the evergreen Aritz Aduriz.

Sevilla too hot to handle

Hours before the clocks went back to signify the end of summer, it was after midnight before the final whistle went as Sevilla edged out Leganes 2-1.

The reason both sides were forced into a night shift? A change in kick-off time just days before the match from 16:30 local time to six hours later due to soaring October temperatures.

Sevilla boss Eduardo Berizzo had complained earlier in the season at early afternoon starts both for the players' and fans' well-being under the unrelenting Seville sun.

That's my boy

Malaga finally registered their first win of the season to save coach Michel's job thanks in no small part to his son Adrian Gonzalez.

Adrian's first goal for the club since joining forces with his father and former Real Madrid legend Michel gave Malaga the lead over Celta Vigo on Sunday.

And Recio's penalty seven minutes from time lifted the Andalusians off the foot of the table after Iago Aspas had levelled for the visitors.