Rajoy and the PP downplay their racist comment: "It's a minor issue"

MadridThe racist comment by Mariano Rajoy about the French team football is still ongoing, but the PP has opted to ignore the criticism and play it down. After France protested the words of the former Spanish president, who said the French team 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 Popular Party. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, has directly demanded that Alberto Núñez Feijóo disavow Rajoy and has asked the media outlet that published his football chronicle, The Debate, who withdraws the article, the sixth by the popular in this World Cup.

Now, in Genoa they refuse to get involved in a controversy they see as inflated by the socialists' interest. The PP spokesperson, Borja Sémper, stressed at a press conference that Rajoy's words are confined to a sports column and asked not to take them out of that "perimeter". "They are sarcastic columns that are written without bad intentions," he stated, adding that it is "common sense" that "to play for the French national team, you have to be French." The option of acting as if nothing happened is also the reaction chosen by the person responsible for the controversy. According to "The World, the former Spanish president has no intention of rectifying.

Sources from Rajoy's circle quoted by the newspaper explain that the former PP leader considers his racist comment a "minor issue" that has been magnified and they argue that he had no "bad intentions". "I will not stoop to the level of certain members of the Spanish government," Rajoy has conveyed to The World. Vox, who also did not want to fuel this debate, has asked "not to politicize football" and has called for not diverting attention from the "corruption" surrounding Sánchez.

Accusations of "xenophobia"

The Spanish government, on the other hand, has considered that Rajoy's comment is not just another anecdote but is part of an attempt by the PP to "boycott and torpedo Spain's extraordinary foreign policy at this time." Specifically, the relationship with France. While Albares has denied that there is an open crisis with the French government, he has taken the opportunity to once again reproach that the Senate, with an absolute majority of conservatives, blocked the ratification of the friendship treaty with the Gallic country last week. The Minister of Foreign Affairs has accused the PP of being an "anti-French" party.

"What the former president left written [...] is absolutely unacceptable. Nothing that, near or far, can cover up racism or xenophobia represents Spain", Albares insisted in statements to the media from Brussels. Hours earlier, Sánchez himself had spoken in a similar vein through X against the "xenophobic declarations" of his predecessor. This morning, at a press breakfast in Madrid, the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, also described Rajoy's writing as a "serious error": "I hope it is not truly what he thinks", he added.

The criticism has not only come from the Spanish government, from the French — this Monday the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Nöel Barrot, joined in, speaking of "pathetic" statements — and from progressive parties, but even from the right and far-right there have been voices that have distanced themselves. Marine Le Pen's party, National Rally, has branded Rajoy as "racist" and stated that "everyone should condemn" his "scandalous, shameful and regrettable statements". In Spain, the former president of the PP of Catalonia and co-founder of Vox, Aleix Vidal-Quadras, also criticized Rajoy for using a definition of "French based on ethnic criteria and not on civil law". "He has stirred up a dangerous hornet's nest", he warned on X.

Borja Iglesias: "It makes me sad"

In the football world, one of the strikers of the Spanish national team, the Galician Borja Iglesias, has spoken out. "I am surprised that at this stage we are like this [...] France is so rich in many things due to the number of people from different backgrounds it has," he claimed, admitting that he feels "a little sorry" about what happened. "Perhaps [Rajoy] did not do it with bad intentions, but we have to be more careful with these things," he advised.