Now in Spain the campaigns for the local elections have been interrupted by the discussion around racism, rudeness and respect due to a Brazilian footballer, the young Vinicius, sharp striker of Real Madrid.
Since a few years ago, the left winger, who wears the number 20 on his back, tides the defenses of all formations, Spanish and foreign, which faces the team that made glorious the Argentine Alfredo Di Stéfano. Always on a knife edge, Vinicius challenges with his game. And with his character he has lit the stands of others, who have not always reacted with education and patience to his way of being, between samba game and emulation of mockery as a way to enter and throw between the local defenses.
He has been merciless with insults, addressing the stands as if it were a field player, until this last weekend, in Valencia, before the local team, an indeterminate chorus of voices called him everything (among other niceties, "monkey", already habitual in his confrontations) to clean or dirty shout.
As a legendary title of Spanish literature says, due to a Catalan from Murcia, Francisco Candel, God who armed himself! The team that was Di Stéfano's, and that is now Benzema's, the French striker, reacted by denouncing the racism of the Valencian stand.
The president of this club, who wears white and has won almost everything he has set out to win, denounced the insulters as racist, and the team they cheered, before the referee authorities, whom he urged to change their attitude to save the honor of the Brazilian player.
The president of Real Madrid, the very powerful businessman Florentino Pérez, followed President Lula of Brazil in calling for justice, and good manners, and respect, for Vinicius, the main victim of the racism that now surfaces on the playing fields of Spain. Rio de Janeiro's famous Corcovado statue was turned off in protest in favor of the footballer, and the president of Real Madrid appeared on television explaining his anti-racist claim.
The result was that Vinicius, who was expelled in those throws of the Valencia stadium for attacking an opponent in the brawl, was forgiven by the refereeing authority and, in addition, was summoned to the stadium as reparation to be seated next to President Pérez and was cheered in the twentieth minute (the number of his shirt) of the match that touched his team, that this last Wednesday did not line him up.
It has been a decisive week of the Spanish local elections, held in the midst of huge brawls of which Argentines know so much from their own. But that political noise has died down until it disappears in the midst of the brawl organized over the repeated outbreak of racism suffered by the most dangerous player of the team that wears white. Florentino Pérez could do more with a dozen words of denunciation on television than the rallies and changed the sign of the national discussion so that the political mess was passed to the anti-racist claim.
The matter will bring more tail, no doubt, because in Spain the discussions that have their origin in the football field last longer, and are even more vehement than those that happen in any other field. Racism has existed since time immemorial. In the Spanish stands it has been common, but it is now when it becomes clear what in other times felt like a venial part of the bad education of the stands. Already the unforgivable of the past begins to be unforgivable in the present. It is due to the young Vinicius that suddenly that anti-racist plant would have germinated.
And now that this is happening, it is worth remembering that Spain is not only racist: it is foul-mouthed, racist, mocking, high-sounding, disrespectful. As they say, what happens here in the fields resembles the anger of the sitting Spaniard, who before what bothers him shouts insulting, instead of waiting for words to come to his throat instead of swearing.
What happens with these evils is not different from what happens in other stands in the world, but it is true that the Spaniard shouts dirty. So dirty that he comes to associate his insults with the greatest danger, racism, which thrives above all in the midst of the impunity enjoyed by the anonymity allowed by the stands.
Now after the anonymous they have wanted to see this or another who has called monkey, and not only, the footballer Vinicius, of Real Madrid, and they have been scared. The insult is there before, and it is not only the heritage of the stands. We have all heard insults of this kind and worse, much worse, but never as now has the nature of the insult been so highlighted.
Because football is a mass sport, of many masses. It is the First Division, this is very visible, because it is televised, and because the clubs, always imitative, have been equipped with citizens busy looking like hooligans who work at the service of the animation stands.
Stands of discouragement too, because they try to improve the mood of the opponent to please the local team and, do not forget, their managers. From these stands, which are infinite, because they are then prolonged in the gatherings, public and private, and are radiating nuclei of insults and mockery, free insult is committed to the point of paroxysm.
But it's not just Spain that is racist. May this terrible outbreak on which embers of fire are now being made not allow other forms of mockery of people, of any color, of any origin, to be forgotten. For years, centuries, that racism that is now evoked was cultivated by this country in the countries it conquered, and the aftermath of that transoceanic mockery has never been erased.
Those who are descendants of those who first suffered historical disdain have lived in Spain, where they have come to work, the unbearable arbitrariness of Spanish lordship. At one time the term "sudaca" was here a joke in bad taste, which was diluted because in turn the sudacas made a joke about it.
The foreigners who came to Spain after the world war and settled, for example, in my town, accelerated their German cars to get us away from the filth of the street. An English boy heard me speak in the neighborhood and since I did not know his language he taught me his (the tongue of the mouth, not the one of speaking) to spit out all the milk I had just sipped.
The prefect of the Salesians of La Orotava, also in my village, warned the poor children, the tribe to which I belonged in that school, that if I did not stop in my gangstering I would have to leave the classrooms, like the other poor children, of whom there were two.
Poverty and other attributes without guilt of the human race, and not only the color, have been fodder for the mockery perpetrated by the stands of animation that society has given itself to express, with laughter or laughter, its contempt for the other.
It is interesting to observe today (that is, right now) how garments are torn by the present precipitation of insults... on the playgrounds. Citizens, politicians, journalists, people of all colours and colours, insult every day, even in Parliament, those who are on the other side, and they do so too, alas, in the stands of animation of journalism.
There are journalists, even, who call ez to the one they can not see even in painting (Pedro Sánchez, I finish in ez, president of the Government), and in the summaries of what is heard and what is seen there are people of high institutional depth, or of high depth, without more, who hide their education and exhibit, like those who insult Vinicius, the mockery of the opponent in the middle of a crowd that sometimes, alas, comes from the people elected to represent us in the stands of public life.
Racist, of course, very racist, but that is not the only evil that dwells among us. The anger of the sitting Spaniard is now, too, the anger of the foul-mouthed Spaniard who insults what he ignores. Football is at the centre of the discussion at the moment, but the biggest insult, racism, comes from afar and leads, for example, to stadiums.
Juan Cruz is a journalist and writer.