A match-fixing scandal centred on Barcelona FC has spilled over into politics, showing that decades-old divisions die hard in Spain. Triggered by the so-called ‘Negreira Case’, which concerns payments of 6.7 million euros (about £5.9 million) allegedly made by Barca to a company linked to a Spanish refereeing official between 2001-18, Real Madrid and their greatest rival are accusing each other of links to Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator who ruled the country from 1936 to his death in 1975.
The row started last week, when Barca’s president Joan Laporta claimed that if any Spanish club should be subject to suspicions of referee favouritism, it’s Los Blancos, which he provocatively described as the ‘team of the regime’. Real Madrid immediately returned the accusations of cosying up to Franco. In a brief video posted on YouTube called ‘Who Was The Team of Regime’?, it pointed out a few carefully-selected facts: that FC Barcelona gave the dictator two medals in the 1970s (both of which were revoked by the club in 2019), made him an honorary member in 1965, received financial assistance from his regime and that the team’s stadium, Camp Nou, was inaugurated by Francoist minister Jose Solis Ruizin in 1957.
FC Barcelona gave the dictator two medals in the 1970s
Isabel Ayuso, the Conservative president of Madrid, described the video as ‘magnificent’.
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