The Government asks Madrid to remove the video about the regime’s team: “It is an indecent ‘fake new'”

2023-04-18 14:58:14

The video with which Real Madrid replied yesterday to the attack launched by Joan Laporta against the white entity has caused a political storm in Catalonia. The Government has demanded this Tuesday that the Bernabéu club remove the images and apologize to the victims of Francoism.

The video, produced by Real Madrid TV and broadcast on social networks, denies that Madrid was the regime’s team and points to Barça as the favorite club of the Franco regime. Laporta, in his press conference yesterday at the Camp Nou, tried to divert attention from the controversy over the millionaire payments to the former vice president of the national referees committee, charging against Madrid and against the president of LaLIga, Javier Tebas, for having appeared in the criminal case against the Barcelona club.

Regarding Madrid, Laporta said that it has been the regime’s team for decades, specifically he spoke of 70 years in which the national committee of referees was chaired by former partners or white managers. “He has done an exercise in cynicism,” he said about the entity chaired by Florentino Pérez, whom he did not attack. The Castellana club responded with the same harshness, which has opened a debate about which of the two was really the club of the Franco regime.

The video itself starts like this: “What was the regime’s team?” And he remembers the aid received by Barça, financially rescued three times during the Franco regime through reclassifications. Interspersed with images of the Node, the piece recalls that the Camp Nou was inaugurated by Franco’s general minister and that the club decorated the dictator with the gold insignia and the title of honorary member. Barça won eight leagues and nine cups during the Franco regime, he concludes. “With Franco, it took Madrid 15 years to win the league,” the whites reply. And it ends with a phrase from Bernabéu: “When I hear that Real Madrid has been the regime’s team, it makes me want to shit on the father of the person who says so.” The video has fallen like a bomb in Catalonia, on a very sensitive issue, where football, politics and historical memory are mixed, issues in which many wounds are still open.

The Government believes that the video is an “insult” to the thousands of people who suffered the repression of Francoism. “He has crossed a red line,” said the spokesperson for the Generalitat, Patrícia Plaja. In her opinion, it is “indecent”, “irresponsible” and also “false”. It is a ‘fake news’ manual, she has pointed out. And an offense, in his opinion, specifically for the memory of Josep Sunyol, president of Barça, assassinated by the Francoists in 1938. The video has caused great discomfort in Can Barça, which could counterattack and continue with a dynamic of action- reaction between the two greats of Spanish football that suggests that it could end in a break in relations between the two entities, currently embarking on a common project such as the European Super League.

Carles Puigdemont has also entered the Madrid-Barça war, but taking the controversy to his own ground and comparing the territorial dispute with that of Catalonia and the rest of Spain. “They do the same thing with Barça that they have been doing with Catalonia for decades,” said the former president of the Generalitat. In his opinion, Madrid imposes a false story, in which he tries to present the oppressors as victims.