[ad_1]
Wouldn’t it be nice if Spain could celebrate a great sporting achievement without ruining everything afterward?
Last year, former Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) president Luis Rubiales infamously gave Spanish star Jenni Hermoso a non-consensual kiss during the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup final awards ceremony.
The defeat, which will see Rubiales face trial soon, also greatly overshadowed the women’s team’s glorious victory.
read more: Spain’s High Court rules Luis Rubiales will stand trial for ‘non-consensual kiss’ on Jenny Hermoso
One year later, the Spanish men’s national team made a splash at Euro 2024, with the diverse, young squad advancing easily through the group and knockout stages with impressive maturity and mesmerizing skill.
Spain won a deserved fourth European Championship title with a 2-1 win over England, but once again the television broadcast was dominated by an unnecessary scandal rather than a celebration of sporting glory.
Captain Alvaro Morata and Manchester City midfielder Rodri led the team in singing during an open-top trophy parade in central Madrid “Gibraltar belongs to Spain” (“Gibraltar belongs to Spain”), much to the delight of thousands of adoring fans.
Unsurprisingly, the insulting song sparked a diplomatic crisis, with some, such as Canary Islands First Minister Fabian Picardo, criticising it as “disgusting” and “an old cliché from the days of General Franco”.
Picado and his 30,000 fellow Gibraltarians have every right to be outraged because the basic fact is that Gibraltar is British and always will be.
The notes are in pounds, the pubs serve fish and chips, the post boxes are red and the high streets have shops like Next, Matalan and Marks & Spencer.
But Gibraltar isn’t just culturally similar to the UK – this tiny overseas territory can also rely on the weight of history.
As with land swaps around the world, Britain legally acquired Gibraltar in 1713 through the Treaty of Utrecht following the War of the Spanish Succession.
This binding decree guarantees that Britain will always possess Gibraltar – no ifs and no buts.
This principle has been reaffirmed countless times since then, not least in the two democratic referendums on Gibraltar’s sovereignty, in which the vast majority expressed their commitment to preserving Gibraltar’s ties to the United Kingdom.
By chanting “Gibraltar belongs to Spain”, the national men’s football team not only proved their ignorance, but also sided with the most unsavory figure in Spanish political history.
Who could forget, for example, that it was the fascist dictator General Franco who believed most in Spain’s claims and most memorably closed the border for more than a decade simply because Gibraltar dared to enact a constitution.
Franco’s ideological successor, the far-right Vox party, is equally eager to use its victory on Sunday to reignite the debate over Gibraltar’s sovereignty.
After the match, they posted a tweet on their official X account that read “European Champions” in front of a deliberately provocative photo of the iconic Rock.
Does Spanish football really want to be associated with these politicians?
After all, Spain could not have won the World Cup without immigration and ethnic diversity, which parties like Vox oppose.
Lamine Yamal, 17, Spain’s starting player for the tournament, is the son of an Equatorial Guinean mother and a Moroccan father, who was arrested last year and fined more than €500 for throwing eggs at Vox supporters.
He was born in a Catalan neighborhood that Vox party politicians called a “multicultural cesspool.”
Likewise, Nico Williams, 21, whose parents are also Ghanaian, crossed the border into Spain’s North African enclave of Melilla.
As Spain coach Luis de la Fuente noted, the national team embodies a modern, multicultural, diverse and inclusive Spain.
By promoting far-right policies (as they did in their Gibraltar slogan), the players are doing a disservice to themselves and their supporters.
They must apologise to the people of Gibraltar, educate themselves and correct their wrongdoings.
[ad_2]
Source link
