No, it is not a minor issue. A former Spanish president like Mr. Mariano Rajoy cannot make a racist comment in good faith and then hide his head in the sand: "It's a minor issue," he let slip.. Absolutely not. A racist comment is not a minimizable issue. The very act of trying to ignore it shows a lack of sensitivity to the issue. In reality, Rajoy has given vent – consciously or unconsciously – to a banal racism that is still very present in Spanish society today. You only have to go to football stadiums to hear the insults many players receive.
To state, as the former PP leader has done, that the French national football team is a team of "great quality" but "without Frenchmen" is precisely that: racism. Of the twenty-six players on the team, twenty-three were born in France. Of course, they all speak perfect French. They are citizens of the Republic with all rights and duties. Neither their skin color, nor their families' origins, nor their religious beliefs should call into question their French citizenship. Only someone with an ethnicist, i.e., racist, mindset can question it.
This is exactly what Rajoy has done, and regrettably so, who should be asked, for example, if he considers Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams, the two forwards of the Spanish national team born here, but black and sons of immigrant families of African origin, to be Spanish. Does he also consider them less Spanish or second-class Spaniards? To be truly Spanish, according to Rajoy, must you be white and have many Castilian surnames? This is called supremacist essentialism.
Perhaps Rajoy sees less of a problem with the late naturalizations of two white players of French origin who compete with Spain? These are the cases of Robin Le Normand, born in Brittany, who obtained Spanish nationality in 2013, and Aymeric Laporte, a native of Aquitaine, who had represented France in youth categories (up to under-21) and was called up to the absolute French national team, but never debuted. Until in 2021 he obtained Spanish nationality and, paradoxically, was a starter in the final of the UEFA Nations League that year which Spain lost to France 1-2. Would he consider them French if they had competed with the Gallic team? Are they Spanish now, or are they also not pure enough for the former president, who has appointed himself a football commentator guarding national essences?
Football, like any sporting, social, and cultural activity, should be a tool for integration, not exclusion and division. Rajoy, with his not-so-funny flippancy, does nothing but fuel xenophobia and racism. It is unbecoming of the responsibility of a former president. What he should do is apologize and rectify. Unfortunately, it rather seems that a good part of the PP, under pressure from Vox, intends to reappropriate the most rancid and harsh Spanishness, with uninhibited discourse against immigration, even if it means crossing the line of racism. It is truly regrettable.
