“When I hear Real Madrid described as ‘the team of the regime’, it makes me want to sh*t on the father of whoever says it.”
Real Madrid posted a video clip to their Twitter account on Monday evening and this is how its four minutes and 27 seconds comes to an end. They are the words of former club president Santiago Bernabeu de Yeste, who died in 1978.
The video was published several hours after Barca’s current president Joan Laporta had spoken about Madrid.
In a press conference that morning, called to address the corruption charges his club face over payments made to a former referees’ chief, Laporta went on the defensive. He spoke of “ferocious attacks” on Barca. He took aim at La Liga, accusing the body’s leadership of “fuelling false narratives”.
“When I hear Real Madrid described as ‘the team of the regime’, it makes me want to sh*t on the father of whoever says it.”
Real Madrid posted a video clip to their Twitter account on Monday evening and this is how its four minutes and 27 seconds comes to an end. They are the words of former club president Santiago Bernabeu de Yeste, who died in 1978.
The video was published several hours after Barca’s current president Joan Laporta had spoken about Madrid.
In a press conference that morning, called to address the corruption charges his club face over payments made to a former referees’ chief, Laporta went on the defensive. He spoke of “ferocious attacks” on Barca. He took aim at La Liga, accusing the body’s leadership of “fuelling false narratives”.
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He also took aim at Real Madrid, characterising their reaction as “an unprecedented show of cynicism”. He claimed that Madrid had been “favoured in terms of refereeing decisions historically and in the present”.
Laporta added: “They claim to feel harmed in sporting terms by this. This comes from a club… that was regarded as ‘the club of the regime’.
“Why was that? Because of how close they were to the political, economic and sporting powers. For 70 years, the people in charge of making decisions in that regard were from Real Madrid.”
When Laporta spoke of “the regime”, he was referring to the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, who ruled Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975.
Madrid were offended. There was an expectation that the club would quickly formulate a response, but few anticipated the nature of the reply that we did end up seeing.
The tone of the video might be familiar for viewers of Real Madrid TV, but it was quite different to the more conservative and restrained nature of the club’s public statements.
Here, The Athletic explains what it contained.
What did the video say?
Madrid’s video begins with a scene from Laporta’s press conference yesterday, with his words accompanied by dramatic music.
In the clip, he says: “I want to refer to the appearance of a club in the trial. A club who have gone there freely, who have appeared as a private prosecutor in the trial. And a club who say they feel harmed in sporting terms. And this club is Real Madrid. A club that we all know have been favoured in terms of refereeing decisions historically and in the present.
“Whatever the reasons are, they have been favoured. We all know they have been favoured by refereeing decisions. A club who have been considered as the team of the regime.”
The screen then fades to black, and a title in white capital letters appears:
‘Which club was the team of the regime?’
As the music reaches another crescendo, another title follows:
‘The Camp Nou was inaugurated by the minister of General Franco, Jose Solis Ruiz.’
Archive footage shows Solis attending this event in September 1957, as the auxiliary bishop of Barcelona holds a religious ceremony and the national anthem is played.A series of further titles follows:
‘Barcelona presented Franco with the Gold and Diamond badge’
This refers to a commemorative club badge Madrid claim Barcelona awarded to Franco. The honour is today awarded to those who have been club members for 75 years.
‘Barcelona made Franco an honorary member in 1965’
It’s unclear if this particular claim is accurate. It has been contested by journalists working for Cadena Ser, who reported that members of Barca’s archives told them it is not true.
‘Barcelona awarded Franco a medal three times’
A series of archive clips apparently showing Franco meeting with Barca officials and being presented with various honours, is played.
‘Barcelona were saved from bankruptcy three times by Franco thanks to land reassessments’
The video footage that follows features historical newspaper clippings carrying headlines on this subject, in between archive photos that appear to show Barcelona players performing a Nazi salute.
‘Barcelona won eight league titles and nine Copas del Generalisimo under Franco’
The Copa del Generalisimo is today known as the Copa del Rey. Franco was known as Generalisimo (the highest-ranking of all generals), following a ceremony held before the end of the Spanish Civil War, in September 1936.
‘With Franco, Real Madrid took 15 years to win La Liga’
Madrid’s first league title victory following the Civil War came in the 1953-54 campaign. In 1943, they beat Barcelona in a Copa del Generalisimo semi-final that has been widely discussed. Barca won the first leg 3-0 at home, but lost the away leg 11-1, having supposedly been visited by one of Franco’s henchmen.
Madrid lost the final 1-0 to Athletic Bilbao, who during the Franco years had to play as Atletico de Bilbao.
A final title reads:
‘Real Madrid were dismantled during the Civil War. Players were murdered, arrested and exiled, as the documentary of Santiago Bernabeu says’
A clip from this documentary about Bernabeu, broadcast for the first time by Real Madrid TV in January, shows, as described by its accompanying voiceover, the “critical situation” the club found itself in at the end of the Civil War in 1939.
The voiceover says: “The club’s headquarters were destroyed in a bombardment. Their trophies had been robbed. And the stands of the old Chamartin (Real Madrid’s former ground) had been taken down for wood. Only five players remained from that squad. The rest had gone into exile or had been arrested.”
At the end of the video, almost five minutes in length, Bernabeu then delivers the line that is repeated in the opening paragraph of this article.
It should be said here that Real Madrid’s translation of his words, in the English version of their video, shared on social media on Tuesday, is less vulgar. This is reflective of the way Spanish tends to casually feature language that in English might be considered rude.
The translation provided by Madrid is: “When I hear ‘Real Madrid are the team of the regime’, I want to curse the father of whoever says it.”
The ending title card then reads:
‘Which club is the team of the regime?’
Who was Franco?
General Franco rose to power after leading right-wing military forces to victory in the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that started when he rebelled against the leftist Republican government elected in 1936.
In 1939 he established a dictatorship and ruled as the country’s head of state from that year until his death in 1975 at the age of 82.
Following Franco’s death, Spain made a transition to democracy informed by a so-called ‘pact of forgetting’ agreed between political parties on opposite sides. In this way, Spain has not experienced the same reckoning with its past that, for example, Germany has.
It wasn’t until late 2007 that a law was passed requiring the state to assist families searching for the bodies of their relatives killed, either during the conflict or in the brutal repression that followed victory for Franco’s Nationalist troops.
While the oppression and execution of political opponents was a defining part of Franco’s early rule, the repression of Spain’s diversity in culture and language was a longer theme and languages such as Catalan, spoken in Barcelona, or Basque, spoken in Bilbao, were restricted.
In 2019, Franco’s remains were moved from where he was buried, in a basilica of the Valley of the Fallen, a national monument carved into a mountain about 30 miles from Madrid that was built in part by his political prisoners.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had made such a move a key pledge in his Socialist Party’s manifesto. After the exhumation was carried out, he said: “Modern Spain is the product of forgiveness, but it can’t be the product of forgetfulness.”
It is estimated that more than 100,000 victims of Spain’s civil war, and the repression that was carried out afterwards, are still missing.
What has the reaction been?
A number of Real Madrid legends were quick to react to the video. Former Real full-backs Marcelo and Alvaro Arbeloa both reacted with a white heart in response to the club’s tweet.
Meanwhile, former Madrid goalkeeper Iker Casillas quote tweeted the post with the caption: ‘Padreo total! Booommmm!’. There is not a direct translation of ‘padreo’ in English but it refers to dominating someone else.
Many other accounts responded with tweets praising Real president Florentino Perez. A host of Madrid fans changed their profile pictures to members of the director’s board, who are mostly older men and who have become known as the ‘dinojunta’ — the dinosaur board — because of this.
On Tuesday, Catalonia’s regional government called on Real to take the video down. Its spokesperson, Patricia Plaja, called it a “manipulation of history so crude that it seems textbook” and described it as “indecent fake news”.
“It’s irresponsible, an offence and an insult to the thousands of people who suffered Franco’s regime, also FC Barcelona, starting with the president at the time, Josep Sunyol, who was executed by the regime, which maybe Real Madrid don’t remember,” Plaja added.
Barcelona sources have told The Athletic the club does not intend to respond.