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 are debating which was the regime's football team. First, Joan Laporta put the label on him at Real Madrid. And then, Florentino Pérez, true to his style, without opening his mouth, using the television of the white club (which one?), published a video demonstrating with "data" that the real team of the regime was Barcelona .
Of course, the next day in Catalonia, on the channel/broadcaster of the Barcelona club (which one?) they were raging defending Barcelona's republicanism. They remembered facts as irrefutable as the assassination of its president, Josep Sunyol, shot by the Franco regime, or how their fans displayed their Catalanness, becoming over the years what Vázquez Montalbán described as "more than a club". With this label we have survived all kinds of temptations, including being sponsored with petrodollars from a dictatorship.
The ball was already perfectly placed for him to jump into the field of politics, if he hadn't already. And since in these messes she moves like a fish in water, Isabel Díaz Ayuso did not let the opportunity pass, taking advantage of an interview on her station (and Federico's). Since "historical memory is so fashionable now", he wanted to congratulate Real Madrid for "a fantastic video" and charge against nationalism (which one?) capable of "manufacturing hatred that is stronger than reason ".
The president doesn't give a shit and manages to have a certain grace when it comes to humiliating the other. In front of Losantos, the best nicknamer in the Eurozone (the prize goes to the one he gave to Yolanda Díaz, "la Fashionaria"), he finished by saying that Barça uses the regime as a Francomodín. Admittedly, the scriptwriter of the president's speeches is brilliant. My kingdom for a cockfight between the screenwriters of Ayuso and Rufián.
As it could not be otherwise, at the press conference after the weekly meeting of the Government of the Generalitat, the spokeswoman Patrícia Plaja also put in a spoonful. "Manipulation of the manual" "fake new indecent" and a formal request to the Real Madrid Football Club to withdraw the video "for having crossed a red line". Plaja would not need a screenwriter of the many that are in the already famous Catalan comedy programs, to give it that point of rascally spark that those of the president of Madrid have.
The worst of all has been Laporta, who, having to give explanations for the Negreira scandal, where he himself is splashed out, appeared on Monday and did not give a single solid reason to excuse his club from paying 7 million euros to Enríquez i Fill, S.A. Of course, like a good La Rambla thriller - "where is the ballot, where is the ballot" - he made it disappear and placed the "regime team" ballot that we've been talking about all week.
Another textbook populist controversy. Ephemeral and effective, but that may have had something positive. Many youngsters will have heard about the regime, Francoism, for the first time, and have seen that neither of the two great Spanish clubs wants to be linked to it, that is, to fascism. The truth is that in these times of exaltation of the face, of rewriting that very dark stage of our history, it is not bad at all.
By the way, Madrid is already in the semi-finals of the Champions League. And in the Stanford Bridge box office, where Florentino Pérez was, the king emeritus appeared to witness the game of what was never the regime's team.
