Former Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, has come under mounting criticism over remarks about France’s national football team that many have condemned as racist.
Rajoy, who served as Spain’s prime minister from 2011 to 2018, made the comments in a World Cup column published by the online newspaper El Debate on Friday while previewing Spain’s semi-final clash with France.
“It’s worth remembering that France has been a two-time world champion and was a finalist in the last World Cup,” he wrote. “They’ve won every match they’ve played in this World Cup and are currently ranked No 1 in the Fifa rankings. They also have a top-level squad. That said, they don’t have any French players. And they’re playing very well. They’ll be a formidable opponent.”
The remarks sparked widespread backlash and drew comparisons to recent racist comments directed at France captain Kylian Mbappé by a Paraguayan senator.
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez condemned Rajoy’s statement in a post on X.
“There are those who still measure belonging by surname, place of birth, or skin colour,” Sánchez wrote.
“Others measure it by our roots in a country and our will to contribute to it. Playing soccer. Caring for our elders. Or opening businesses. Spain belongs to those who love it and work for it. Not to those who shame it with xenophobic statements.”
In France, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez also criticised Rajoy’s comments.
“That’s completely unacceptable,” Nuñez told BFMTV on Sunday. “That’s completely not what France is about. France is a country of diversity where everyone can thrive and find their place.”
The leader of the French Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, stressed that every player in the French squad is a French citizen.
“France is not an ethnic nation; it has no skin colour or religion,” he wrote on X. “It is a political nation united around the republican motto – much to the chagrin of the racist right.”
French Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel likewise denounced Rajoy’s remarks, likening them to the recent comments made by Paraguayan senator Celeste Amarilla, who described Mbappé as a “colonised Cameroonian, desperately trying to pass himself off as French”.
Roussel said: “They cannot help but spew filthy racism in an attempt to annoy our beautiful French team.”
France’s Minister for Overseas Territories, Naïma Moutchou, said the controversy reflected a recurring pattern whenever the French team achieved success.
“The same racist obsessions and insults resurface every time [France] wins,” she said.
“These aren’t just ‘slips of the tongue’. It’s a methodical and normalised hatred of France and what it represents.”
Moutchou urged the French Football Federation, which has already lodged a complaint with Paris prosecutors over Amarilla’s remarks, to “pursue all legal avenues”.
Sánchez concluded his message with a sporting gesture ahead of the semi-final.
“France, we’ll see you in the semi-finals. May the best team win and may racism lose.”
