The controversial words of the former Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy about the French national team continue to cause a stir. The former leader stated in a column in the newspaper El Debate that France, Spain’s next opponent in the World Cup semifinals, “has a very high-level squad, that is true, but without French players.”
These statements have not been well received in the neighboring country and were addressed this Sunday by the French Interior Minister, Laurent Nuñez, who described Rajoy’s words as “absolutely unacceptable.” “If that statement is accurate, it is absolutely unacceptable. It does not reflect at all what France is,” Nuñez said in an interview on BFM TV when asked about the controversy with the former Spanish president.
The minister defended that France is “a country of diversity, where everyone can develop and find their place,” and lamented that such comments fuel racist attacks against the French national team players, particularly against their captain, Kylian Mbappé.
The First Secretary of the Socialist Party (PS), Olivier Faure, went further by responding to “the racist right.” “France is not an ethnic nation. It has no skin color or religion. It is a political nation united around the motto of the Republic. No matter how much the racist right dislikes it,” he said on his social media.
All players of the French national team are French
French Embassy in Spain
He was not the only one to criticize Mariano Rajoy’s unfortunate words. The French Embassy in Spain published a message on its social media defending that “all players of the French national team are French.” “Without wanting to enter into a controversy, it is worth recalling the facts: all players of the French national team are French. Of the 26 players, 23 were born in France. The 3 who were born abroad are also French.”
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Pedro Sánchez assures that “Spain belongs to those who love and work for it. Not to those who shame it with xenophobic statements”
In Spain, the criticism has not stopped either. The Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, responded to Rajoy through social media: “There are those who still measure belonging by surname, place of birth, or skin color. Others measure it by attachment to a country and the will to contribute to it. Playing football. Caring for our elders. Or opening businesses.”
“Spain belongs to those who love and work for it. Not to those who shame it with xenophobic statements. France, see you in the semifinals. May the best win and racism lose,” wrote the Spanish president.
Several members of the government have also joined the president’s response in a particularly sensitive political context, just as the PP, the party to which Rajoy still belongs, has just halted the Friendship Treaty between France and Spain by taking it to the Constitutional Court. In this regard, the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, stated on his X social media profile that “it is hurtful and dangerous. Everything that covers up racism and xenophobia is despicable. It is not Spain. All French people, without distinction, are our friends, our neighbors, and partners. The PP’s sabotage will not prevent the Friendship Treaty with France.”
For his part, the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, was even more forceful, referring to Rajoy as a “corrupt post-Franco blockhead whom the judiciary of this country has spared from jail through a side door.” In response to the uproar caused by his statements, Puente later explained on his social media the reason why he used each of those terms, defending that “they are not insults,” but “the use of the Spanish language with rigor and propriety.”
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