About to complete the first quarter of the 21st century, in Spain we continue to fight over the story of the 20th. In the middle of 2023 we debated which was the soccer team of the regime. First, Joan Laporta put the label on Real Madrid. And later, Florentino Pérez, faithful to his style, without saying a word, using the television of the white club (which one?), He published a video demonstrating with "data" that the real team of the regime was Barcelona.
Of course, the next day in Catalonia, the chain/station of the Barca club (which one?) They were in a rage defending the republicanism of Barcelona. They remembered events as irrefutable as the assassination of its president, Josep Sunyol, shot by the Franco regime, or how its fans exhibited their Catalan identity, becoming over the years what Vázquez Montalbán described as “more than a club”. With that label we have survived all kinds of challenges, including being sponsored with petrodollars from a dictatorship.
The ball was already perfectly placed to jump into the field of politics, if it had not already done so. And since she moves like a fish in water in those places, Isabel Díaz Ayuso did not miss the opportunity, taking advantage of an interview on her station (and Federico's). Since "historical memory is so fashionable now", she wanted to congratulate Real Madrid for "a fantastic video" and charge against nationalism (which of them?) Capable of "fabricating a hatred that is stronger than reason ”.
The president does not stitch without a thread and manages to have a certain grace when it comes to humiliating the other. In front of Losantos himself, the best nickname maker in the euro zone (the award goes to the one who gave Yolanda Díaz, “la Fashionaria”), he finished off by saying that Barça uses the regime as a “frank card”. It must be recognized that the scriptwriter of the president's speeches is brilliant. My kingdom for a cockfight between the scriptwriters of Ayuso and Rufián.
Of course, in the press conference after the weekly meeting of the Government of the Generalitat, the spokesperson Patrícia Plaja also put a spoonful. “Manual manipulation”, “indecent fake news” and a formal request to the Real Madrid Soccer Club to remove the video “for having crossed a red line”. Plaja would not have a scriptwriter out of so many that there are in the already famous Catalan humor programs, to give him that point of rogue spark that those of the president of Madrid have.
The most crack of all has been Laporta, who, having to explain the Negreira scandal, where he himself is splashed, appeared on Monday and did not give a solid reason to excuse his club from paying 7 million euros to Enríquez and Son , S.A. Of course, like a good trilero on the Rambla – “where is the ball, where is the ball” – he made it disappear and placed the “regime team” ball that we have been talking about all week.
Another manual populist polemic. Ephemeral and effective, but that may have had something positive. Many kids will have heard of the regime for the first time, of Francoism, and have verified that neither of the two big Spanish clubs wants to be linked to it, that is, to fascism. The truth is that in these times of exaltation of the facha, of rewriting of that dark stage of our history, it is not bad at all.
By the way, Madrid is already in the semifinals of the Champions League. And in the box at Stanford Bridge, where Florentino Pérez was, the king emeritus appeared to witness the match of which was never the regime's team.
