Rajoy downplays his racist comment: "It's a minor issue"

MadridThe racist comment by Mariano Rajoy about the French team in football is still causing ripples. After France protested the words of the former Spanish president, who said the Gallic squad is a team with a lot of "level" but "without Frenchmen", Pedro Sánchez's government has come out in force this Monday to use the controversy against the PP. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, has directly demanded that Alberto Núñez Feijóo disavow Rajoy and has asked the outlet that published his football chronicle, El Debate, to withdraw the article, the sixth by the popular politician in this World Cup.

However, according to El Mundo, the former Spanish president has no intention of rectifying and has opted to downplay the criticism. Sources from Rajoy's circle cited by the newspaper explain that the former PP leader considers his racist comment a "minor issue" that has been magnified and claim that he had no "malicious intent". "I will not stoop to the level of certain members of the Spanish government," Rajoy told El Mundo.

"What the former president wrote [...] is absolutely unacceptable. Nothing that, directly or indirectly, could cover up racism or xenophobia represents Spain," Albares said in statements to the media from Brussels. "Quite the contrary," he added, urging Feijóo to "make it clear that he does not share this position" and "stop trying to boycott and torpedo the extraordinary foreign policy that Spain currently has," he said.

Hours earlier, Pedro Sánchez himself had spoken in a similar vein via X against the "xenophobic declarations" of his predecessor. "There are those who still measure belonging by surname, place of birth, or skin color. Others measure it by rootedness in a country and the will to contribute to it," he stated this Sunday, while this morning, at an informative breakfast in Madrid, the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, described Rajoy's writing as a "serious mistake": "I hope it is not truly what he thinks," he added.

The controversy has led the French Minister of the Interior, Laurent Nuñez, to describe Rajoy's words as "absolutely unacceptable", and the Spanish Minister of Inclusion and Migration, Elma Saiz, took advantage of this this morning to accuse the former president of having put Spain in a small international conflict". "It is not the responsibility he should have," he said on TVE.

Albares, on the other hand, wanted to downplay the diplomatic consequences of the case, which has exploded two days before the World Cup semi-finals between Spain and France, and denied that there is an open crisis with the French government, although he did not refrain from describing the PP as an "anti-French" party after the Senate blocked last week, with the absolute majority of the conservatives, the ratification of the Treaty of Friendship with the Gallic country.

Asked about the possibility that Rajoy's statement could constitute a hate crime, the minister did not want to be clear. "Undoubtedly this phrase covers up something terrible [...] Not only is it hurtful, it is extraordinarily dangerous," he said, adding that "we cannot allow under phrases that are thus said" to cover up "racist and xenophobic sentiments", he said.

Borja Iglesias: "I'm sorry, we have to be more careful"

In the footballing world, one of those who has spoken out is one of the Spanish national team's forwards, the Galician Borja Iglesias. "I'm surprised that at this stage we are like this [...] France is so rich in many things due to the number of people from different origins it has," he claimed, admitting that he feels "a bit sorry" about what has happened. "Perhaps [Rajoy] didn't do it with bad intentions, but we have to be more careful with these things," he advised.