Rajoy causes outrage with remarks about French team – Paris responds

Reaction from Paris

Rajoy's remarks also caused outrage in Paris. Aurore Bergé, the French commissioner for the fight against discrimination, lamented "repeated racist outbursts" before the World Cup semi-final in Dallas on Tuesday evening. She called on the French Football Federation to take legal action. "It is a systematic and downplayed hatred of France and what it is," said Bergé.

The Minister for the Overseas Territories, Naïma Moutchou, went a step further. "These are not 'outbursts'," she said. "May the better one win and racism lose." In doing so, she took up a sporting formulation to underscore the political dimension of the debate.

Opposition from Madrid

Opposition came from Madrid from the current government. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez reacted on the platform X and explicitly distanced himself from his predecessor's remarks. "There are people who still measure belonging by surname, place of birth, or skin color," Sánchez wrote. "Others measure it by the connection to a country and the will to contribute to it."

The head of government added: "Spain belongs to those who love it and fill it with life. Not to those who bring it into disrepute with xenophobic remarks." With this, Sánchez clearly distanced himself from Rajoy and placed the debate in a larger context with the fight against racism.

Political background

The dispute comes at a sensitive moment: on Tuesday evening, France played the World Cup semi-final in Dallas. Attention for the team and its players is high internationally, and statements about the national identity of the squad carry political weight in France. Rajoy's formulation therefore hit a particularly attentive nerve.

Rajoy himself made no further comments after the publication of his contribution regarding the reactions. The conservative People's Party (PP), to which he belongs, initially remained silent. In Spanish media, the debate was widely picked up on Tuesday, with commentators describing the tensions between Madrid and Paris as avoidable.

The episode shows how major sporting events such as a football World Cup can fuel political debates about national identity, migration, and racism. While France takes the field as a team with great ethnic diversity, the question of who counts as "French" remains contested within French society itself – and Rajoy's remark struck exactly that nerve.

Overall, the incident illustrates the fragility of diplomatic consideration in election campaigns and media debates. The swift reactions from Paris and Madrid show that both sides are taking the incident seriously – and that the coming days will show whether the words will have political consequences or be dismissed as an episode.