Mariano Rajoy didn’t even wait a single night. As soon as Spain had booked their place in the World Cup final, the former prime minister returned to his opinion column in ‘El Debate’ (source in Spanish) with a new piece, entitled ‘You need to keep your sense of humour’, in which he revisits, without softening it in the slightest, the row he himself had sparked days earlier over the French national team.
The text devotes its opening paragraphs to the match, praising Luis de la Fuente and the team’s efforts before moving on to politics. There, Rajoy takes a veiled swipe at Pedro Sánchez, saying he hopes Spain wins, “not that the best team win”, as he himself stresses, in a clear allusion to the message the prime minister had sent him after his previous article.
Rajoy ends with a line that sums up his attitude since the affair blew up: “You already know what I’m like and what I think. Long live Spain! We’ve won once again.”
A row that started earlier
It all began with the column that Rajoy published after Spain’s victory over Belgium in the quarter-finals, where he described France as a team “of a very high level” but, he added, “without French players”. The phrase was interpreted as casting doubt on the nationality of players such as Mbappé, Dembélé or Olise, the sons of Cameroonian, Malian or Congolese families, even though they were born or naturalised in France. The French embassy pointed out that 23 of the 26 players called up were born on French soil, and Sánchez’s government, along with several French ministers, branded his words xenophobic.
The government had already responded sharply to the former prime minister’s remarks in that earlier column. The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, accused him of “bringing shame on Spain” with his comments. For his part, the foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, told his French counterpart that Rajoy’s article did not reflect “the majority feeling of Spaniards”. In the same vein, the government spokesperson, Elma Saiz, criticised the PP politician for not having apologised for his words.
On Wednesday, the equality minister, Ana Redondo, also reacted to Rajoy’s second article on the social network X. “It is surprising that Mariano Rajoy, who does not know the reality of Spain, was ever prime minister and that, without understanding the values of sport, he writes about football. What a joke,” she wrote.
The row also reached the Spanish dressing room. Asked about Rajoy’s comments ahead of the semi-final, Lamine Yamal, the son of a Moroccan father and an Equatoguinean mother, avoided entering into the political confrontation and preferred to champion football as a tool for social cohesion, pointing out that Spain and France are good examples of integration.
The Senegalese precedent
Ousmane Dembélé himself, one of the French stars targeted by Rajoy, has family roots in Senegal and Mauritania. And the debate over the origins of the French squad did not begin with the former Spanish prime minister’s column: before the match between France and Senegal, played on 16 June, Ousmane Sonko, the president of the Senegalese National Assembly, had already made very similar remarks about the make-up of the French side, without provoking anything like the same backlash at the time.
Lekjaa, president of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation, questions Yamal’s ‘Spanishness’
The controversy over the identity of national teams does not affect France alone. The president of the Moroccan Football Federation, Fouzi Lekjaa, has also reignited the debate by referring to Lamine Yamal and his decision to play for Spain rather than Morocco.
In an interview he gave to the French magazine ‘Onze Mondial’, Lekjaa insisted that the federation had always respected the player’s choice and had never changed its relationship with him or his family. However, one of his comments was seen as a veiled reproach to the Spanish international: “Lamine Jamel. I don’t know any Spaniard called Jamel.”
The remark has prompted numerous reactions, once again putting the debate about nationality, family roots and the sense of belonging of footballers with dual heritage on the table. Lamine Yamal could have chosen either national team before opting for Spain, a decision that continues to spark comment in Morocco.