Spain’s Vinicius crisis could mark a new anti-racist era

It has taken a furious confrontation in a football stadium, an international backlash that started at the G7 summit and several days of intense introspection but there is a sense that, finally, Spain could be facing up to its racism problem.

Throughout this season, Real Madrid’s Brazilian striker Vinicius Junior has faced racist insults from fans in stadiums across the country. The 22-year-old posted a video compilation of some of these, including monkey noises, “Die Vinicius” chants and even an effigy of the player, noose round its neck, hanging from a bridge.

[ Spanish police arrest four people after Vinicius effigy was hung from a bridge ]

Last Sunday, however, as Vinicius was being abused once again in Valencia’s Mestalla stadium, the problem came to a head. The player ran to the touchline and angrily pointed at a fan who he said had been aiming monkey noises at him. The game was delayed for 10 minutes due to the ensuing confusion. When it resumed, he ended up getting sent off after a melee with a Valencia player.

Afterwards, Vinicius took to Twitter, where he said that “racism is normal in La Liga. The championship that once belonged to Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Cristiano and Messi today belongs to racists.”

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Within hours of the game, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, spoke out about it from the G7 summit in Japan, saying that “we cannot allow fascism and racism to take root inside football stadiums”.

The ensuing week has been a torrid one for Spain’s football institutions, who have been trying to counter the notion that its stadiums are hotbeds of extremism or that the country as a whole has a racism problem.

After engaging in a self-defeating Twitter dispute with Vinicius over his claims, Javier Tebas, president of the Spanish elite league, La Liga, gave a press conference in which he insisted that neither the country nor its football are racist. He also said that La Liga has repeatedly used its limited powers in this area to denounce incidents of racist insults in stadiums – eight examples of which were aimed at Vinicius this season alone. And, yet, Tebas said, prosecutors, the courts and the football federation hardly ever acted on these complaints.

This time, however, was different. Although La Liga had not yet denounced Sunday’s events, by midweek police had arrested three fans on suspicion of the racist abuse and the football federation had closed down a stand in Valencia’s stadium for five games. Prosecutors are now investigating. In another highly unusual move, Vinicius’s red card was withdrawn.

Meanwhile, a broader debate has been triggered on whether Spain is inherently racist. On Radio Marca, whose programmes usually examine in mind-numbing detail the build-up to and fallout of football games, a heated debate broke out on the issue.

When the pundit Pipi Estrada asserted that “black people walk freely through the streets with nobody bothering them,” adding that “in Spain there is no racism”, his fellow guest Miguel Quintana called him “a lout” who was recycling the language of racists. It was hardly a sophisticated analysis but it meant that even lowbrow media were talking about the issue.

[ Real Madrid lodges hate crime complaint over racist chants aimed at Vinicius Jr ]

The editor of La Vanguardia newspaper, Jordi Juan, wrote that the case of Vinicius “should mark a watershed”, drawing a line under Spain’s relative inaction with regard to this problem.

In the meantime, many are asking why, all of a sudden, the country’s authorities have decided to act so firmly.

There are several reasons, the most obvious being the drama of Vinicius’s confrontation with his abusers in the Mestalla stadium, with his distress and anger caught on camera. The international dimension of this episode has also played a huge role, however. The comments of Lula – president of a major economy and footballing superpower – and the dimming of the lights illuminating the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro in solidarity with Vinicius on Monday, ensured this became a global story. Spain, always acutely sensitive about how it is viewed by others, felt forced to act.

Meanwhile, the fact that Vinicius’s team is 14-time European champion Real Madrid made sure that the spotlight was not going to shift from this episode. An institution with tremendous power and influence led by the tycoon Florentino Pérez, the club has found itself in the unusual position of being a victim.

The question now is whether the authorities will act with such firmness in other circumstances. When, for example, a less-known black player from a smaller club is racially abused and the incident does not make international headlines, what kind of action will be taken? The answer to that will tell us whether or not this episode marks a new beginning for Spain.