2023-05-24 23:20:22
The racist insults uttered against the Brazilian forward of Real Madrid, Vinicius Juniorduring a match of his team against Valencia, last Sunday, have generated condemnation and indignation that has escalated nationally and internationally.
Some argued that these racist attitudes did not occur in the past, something that is not true, as evidenced by other soccer players and ex-soccer players. Others tried to qualify the situation, alleging that Vinicius was treated by the Valencian fans as a “silly” and not as a “monkey”.
However, nothing justifies what happened nor will it change the central theme of the discussion; before the eyes of the world, and quoting the words of the affected Brazilian soccer player, Spain has been pointed out as “a country of racists”.
This is a highly controversial claim. For this reason, experts interviewed by DW explain how true it is that this European country has difficulties in curbing racism, beyond what happens in soccer stadiums, which is often interpreted as a reflection of society.
Spain is not a racist country, but there is racism
“It cannot be said that Spain is a racist country,” David Moscoso, professor of Sports Sociology at the University of Córdoba, told DW. “What is certain,” he adds, “is that far-right groups are sowing an ideology of hate towards foreign people of different skin color or ethnicity”.
According to the specialist, this conduct “is transferred to the field of play, because sport is one more space for the expression of the values and behaviors of our society.”
And in the case of soccer, particularly soccer stadiums, they have become “a space where it seems easier for racist and xenophobic behavior to occur.”
In conversation with DW, Sebastian Rinken, a sociologist at Spain’s Institute for Advanced Social Studies (IESA), agrees that “characterizing Spain as a racist country would not be justified.”
But he qualifies: “It is undeniable that there are racists, and in this sense, Spain has a problem with racism, because it has not managed to prevent a part of the population from continuing to nurture these attitudes.”
Can you measure how racist a country is?
Hate speech, xenophobia and racism are difficult situations to quantify. Few people self-identify as racist and say so openly. Also, victims often do not report these bad experiences to the authorities.
“Racism is a very difficult attitude to measure. Mainly, because many people, almost the entire population, assume that it is not right. They have assimilated the institutional rejection of racist attitudes, so they do not express themselves too freely,” he explains. IESA researcher.
I reject the immigrant
However, a survey conducted by IESA in the fall of 2020 on antipathy towards immigrants and other groups in society revealed that “At least 20 percent of the Spanish population harbors antipathy towards immigrants. And there could be more. It is not a low value, it is a fifth of the population, but it is not the majority,” adds Rinken.
Of course, he clarifies, the antipathy towards immigrants “does not have to have a racist motivation in itself. It may be an antipathy that comes from elsewhere, but we do not know that, and it is difficult to measure.”
A “very lax position of the authorities”
Moscoso maintains that in Spain racist attitudes and hate speech “have practically no sanctions.” Vinicius has stated that the racist insults towards him in Spain are not new.
In fact, Real Madrid has denounced “up to ten times the racist insults against the player. However, nothing has happened and justice has not ruled on the matter. This helps these behaviors to multiply,” he stresses.
The problem could be that “there is a very lax position on the part of the political and sports authorities with respect to the sanction of this type of behaviour”, adds the sports sociologist, who makes a comparison with France, where “the sentence can reach up to a year jail time and a 45,000-euro fine for those people who utter racial insults”.
For his part, Rinke does not believe that the penalty is the solution to the problem. The German researcher believes that “the key to really making progress on the issue is for institutions and political leaders to unequivocally defend diversity in positive terms.” And he concludes: “The signals that institutions emit have an impact.”
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