All the successful Spanish athletes went through El Pardo to pay homage. All. Any initiative with wide repercussions, such as the construction of the Camp Nou, was presented to the dictator, to obtain his essential approval. Any honorary medal was offered first to Franco and all these actions, if it was a questionable club like Barcelona, were absolutely unavoidable.
Ignoring how a personal cult dictatorship works is serious, ignoring the lack of freedoms and analyzing the facts as if they were voluntary acts in a free country is treating the dictatorship as a regime as comparable as any other. Maybe things go that way, because that is no longer ignorance.
Did Real Madrid have preferential treatment during the Franco regime? From the arrival of Santiago Bernabéu to the presidency and especially as a result of the scandalous signing of Di Stéfano in 1953 and the European successes that followed, it is undeniable.
How else was the club qualified as "the best embassy we have sent abroad"? Why did Franco personally deliver the II European Cup in 1957? Why was a (sports) pardon decreed on the occasion of Madrid's Golden Jubilee, but the same request was denied when Espanyol and Atlético made it shortly after? How else was the League or Cup calendar retouched –in good logic– when Madrid needed to prepare a European final and yet Barcelona, in its 1961 final, had two Cup matches just before the final and another more, if he qualified, the day after playing in Bern? Why did they immediately invite Didi to the Spanish embassy in Rio de Janeiro as soon as it was announced that he had signed for Real Madrid? Why, despite his numerous violent reactions and his usual protests, was Di Stéfano expelled only once, in 282 league games with Madrid? (And then he was not penalized for one game, he was not, but the referee who sent him off was punished, by the way). Why did the high white president Raimundo Saporta take an interest in referee Rigo's business days before the 1968 Cup final (Madrid-Barça) and offer him financial help, according to the Blaugrana Pere Baret in his memoirs? Why was it almost a tradition that the arbitration appointments fell on ex-Madridistas?
From the reclassification in 2001 of the land of La Castellana (expropriated during the Franco regime so that Madrid could build facilities for sports and non-profit use) with which the white debt was covered and the Madrid of the galacticos was able to launch, thus performance that led José María Aznar to ensure that "we must help Madrid", as explained by José María García, better not to speak. Because that is no longer Francoism or protection of the regime.
