Former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy (PP) has left France astonished. His article about the World Cup published on Saturday in the outlet El Debate, in which he claimed that the French national team’s football “is of a very high level” but that it plays “without French players,” has been widely considered by the political class and the French government as “racist” and “unacceptable.” Emmanuel Macron’s government and leaders from various parties, such as the socialists, rushed out this Sunday to condemn the “crude racism” and “hatred” expressed in the article.
In Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (PSOE) posted a message on X this Sunday: “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 it 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.”
The controversy originated from a column published in El Debate, owned by the Catholic Association of Propagandists, in which the former Spanish head of government analyzed the French national team a few days before their match on Tuesday against Spain in the World Cup semifinals. Rajoy claimed that the players are not French, perhaps confusing the origin of their parents or ancestors with his own. This is a common analysis in the French far-right, which already began to deploy this view with the national team that won the 1998 World Cup.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez, a descendant of Spanish migrants, told the BFMTV television channel that what Rajoy stated is “totally unacceptable.” He said: “There is only one France, a republic where everyone can find their place, regardless of their origin.”
The minister in charge of the Fight Against Discrimination, Aurore Bergé (Renaissance), also criticized these “repeated racist comments” and stated that “it is time for them to stop and for sport to be sport again: a place where people are judged by their talent and no other criteria.”
Overseas Minister Naïma Moutchou (Horizons) denounced: “With every victory of the Bleus, the same obsessions and racist insults reappear. They are not simple slips; it is a methodical and normalized hatred towards France and what it represents.” Furthermore, she called on the French Football Federation to take legal action against Rajoy, who at the time of this writing had not retracted or made any clarification.
“Whether coming from a Paraguayan senator or a former Spanish prime minister, whether scandalous or more insidious, all racist attacks against the French team are unacceptable. All players on the French team are French. Period. These abhorrent comments will not prevent them from shining on the field. All of France is behind its Bleus,” said the minister in charge of Francophonie, International Alliances, and French Abroad, Éléonore Caroit.
The French Embassy in Madrid also responded on social media to Rajoy’s words: “All players on the French national team are French. Of the 26 called up, 23 were born in France. The three born abroad also have French nationality.”
National Secretary of the French Communist Party, Fabien Roussel, recalled the recent racist incidents during matches with France: “Yesterday it was a Paraguayan senator, today the former Spanish prime minister: they cannot help but express crude racism to try to provoke our magnificent French team.”
“The French team is made up only of French players. France is not an ethnic nation; it has no skin color or religion. It is a political nation united around the republican motto. Even if that annoys the racist right,” responded harshly the leader of the French Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, on X.
The words of the former Spanish leader also provoked reactions in Spain. Apart from Sánchez’s message on X, Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares called Rajoy’s message “hurtful and dangerous” on the same social network. “Anything 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,” he wrote. Transport Minister Óscar Puente called Rajoy a “post-Franco idiot” and assured that “he has never been a moderate.”
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