I'm A Joker

Racism in Spanish sport has raised its less than pleasant head yet again. The decision of the FA to not play a friendly at Real Madrid's Bernabeu Stadium and the part-racism-caused change of venue and then change back again of the Atletico Madrid-Liverpool game are both evidence of the ongoing problems that Spain has, in football at any rate, with its racist elements. Personally, I think the FA have made a mistake. They should have said that they would go back to the Bernabeu - scene of the racist chants during the England game four years ago - and dared the fans to do the same. If they had returned and the same embarrassing noises been raised, then no one would have been able to deny it any longer, especially not the Spanish FA and elements in the media. This is the Spanish FA which continues to dole out inadequate sanctions for racist abuse, such as one for Atletico last season.

The FA, while taking the moral high ground, have pushed the Spanish into a corner; it is for the latter to decide on the venue, not for it to be dictated to by another association. By pushing them, it could make for a more intransigent attitude, rather than one that seeks to kick racism out of its game. Even were the game to be moved, who is to say the same chanting might not occur at another ground? For once, the two parts of Madrid are united in what is seen as a slur on the city, not just on its two football clubs. And there are also the conspiracy theorists; those who believe it is part of a campaign to deny Madrid the 2016 Olympics. The Spanish are getting paranoid about this, as they were when the Sid Lowe-basketball team row blew up amidst similar charges of an anti-Madrid Olympics nature.

Of course, we've been here before where football is concerned, what with Aragones and his Henry remark and Samuel Eto'o threatening to walk off the pitch. Neither met with anything like the kind of action or outcry that they would have in Britain. And that is part of the issue, probably the issue - the difference between a PC Britain and a Spain which, its apologists will say, see monkey chants and the rest as a joke and not to be taken seriously. But joke means fair game, as it used to be in England when the same "joke" was directed at the likes of Clyde Best. Though before the British become too sanctimonious, it is probably true that the same joke might still be played out if it were not for the life bans or a potential race-hatred conviction, while the joke has morphed into something else - go and take a look at youtube, if it's still there, and the abuse of Sol Campbell by Spurs fans. That wasn't overtly racist, but it was there along with the sheer baseness of the chanting and the homophobia.

Nevertheless, Spain is in some sort of circa-Love-Thy-Neighbour denial when it comes to sport racism. Here is a country where, in the media in general, for example, racism is condemned, and yet in its football stadia it is quite the contrary. Even the "AS" sports paper has said that those wishing to make monkey noises would be better off going to a zoo. However, there are the apologists who have it that it's just a joke. So that's all-right then.

But for all this, can it be said that Spain, and by extension, Mallorca is essentially racist? My guess is that it is no more so or no less than Britain. Yet one's experiences govern opinion. Locally, one is just as likely, more likely, to get expressions of a racist nature coming from the mouths of expats as one is to hear them from Spaniards. There is little sense in which, with the exception of recent eastern European immigrants and Moroccans, there is any real xenophobia. There is, though, a linguistic dimension, one that has been raised by Spaniards writing to defend themselves in the English-speaking press, and this relates to the word "negro". To the PC-attuned ear and mind of the Brit, this passes as derogatory, but, in both noun and adjectival form, it is the Spanish word for black person, just as "negro" is the adjective for anything that is black. Black is negro in Spanish. Short of somehow banning the word, a ludicrous proposition, there has to be an understanding that this is not derogatory or insulting; it is a word - no more, no less.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Coldplay (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yeGHyRavAA). Today's title - one of his biggest hits but, IMHO, one of his worst.

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