SPAIN: The abuse of black English soccer players in Madrid reveals deeply ambivalent attitudes to racism in the culture, writes Paddy Woodworth.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about the British media's response to the anti-black racism displayed by Spanish fans at Wednesday's England-Spain "friendly" in Madrid is that they should have been so surprised.
"They are making a huge storm in a teacup," says Jimmy Burns, author of When Beckham Went to Madrid, who is half-English, half-Spanish. "Any journalist who follows Spanish football knows that there are monkey chants when black Real Madrid players take the field against Barcelona, and vice versa."
Spain, of course, is no more immune to the virus of racism than any other country. What is distinctive about Spanish racism is that Spaniards so often refuse to recognise this fact, and pride themselves on their tolerance.
The same senior politician who once told me that there was not a racist bone in the Spanish body politic blithely complained in the next sentence that "Britain is letting Gibraltar fill up with Moors".
This denial of the obvious is borne out by the attitude of the Spanish coach, Luis Aragonés. Last month he privately called the Arsenal player Thierry Henri a "black s**t". Far from apologising when the story broke, he blustered that he refused to accept accusations of racism from "English colonialists".
Carlos Carbajosa, writing yesterday in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo suggested that Aragonés had, by these remarks, inadvertently set the scene for Wednesday's ugly racist chanting by Spanish fans.
But Carbajosa interprets the monkey grunts that erupted from the stands each time a black English player touched the ball in a highly revealing manner:
"Because the Spanish coach had been attacked as a racist by the English press, the counter-attack had to be the jeering at the blacks because, if the blacks did not exist, none of this would have happened".
Thus many Spaniards can comfort themselves with the notion that the problem is not domestic racism, but the aggressive imposition of a "politically correct" agenda by the hypocritical English tabloid newspapers. And while the Spanish press is critical of Aragonés, there is still little pressure on him to resign, despite his point-blank refusal to condemn the monkey-grunters after the match.
In any case, this unsavoury episode reveals a series of deeply contradictory attitudes to race in the Spanish psyche, which go back a long, long way.
A great part of the Iberian peninsula was dominated by Islamic Arabs and Berbers from the 8th to the 15th centuries. Coupled with a large Jewish population in the same period, this "occupation" is a key element in Spanish political psychology.
The "reconquest" by Christians from the north is Spain's founding myth. It is linked to the subsequent expulsion of the Jews, and a deeply ambivalent attitude to the rich Arabic heritage still visible in much of Spain.
When Christian Spain went on to conquer the Americas, its governors massacred indigenous peoples. Yet even now Spaniards take pride in their colonists' (rather occasional) embrace of mestizaje, racial intermarriage.
When their football coach attacks English colonialism today, he reflects a common view that Anglo-Saxon imperialism was much worse for the natives than rule from Madrid.
Likewise, Spain's large gypsy population is often subjected to racist discrimination, yet the art of flamenco, to which they contribute so much, is considered the epitome of Spanish culture by traditionalists. "Purity of blood" has been an obsession of the Spanish nobility and Catholic Church, yet Spanish fascism never contemplated Nazi-style racial extermination camps.
Nevertheless, Gen Franco potently revived the myth of the reconquest in the 1936-39 civil war. And that myth resonates today in the response to the influx of immigrants from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. A banner unfurled at Wednesday's match called for an end to immigration to protect Spanish culture.
These feelings sometimes spill over into mass violence, though Spain, unlike Italy and France, currently has no significant party of the far right. In January 2000 a pogrom against Moroccans took place in the Almerian town of El Ejido following three murders by immigrants. A dozen legitimate businesses, and hundreds of shanty town homes, were destroyed.
On the other hand, the Islamist bombing massacre in Madrid last March, which killed 200 people, produced hardly any major anti-Moroccan reprisals.
Spanish racism, then, remains an enigma, at once more overt and less vicious - so far - than many of its counterparts elsewhere. Genuine multicultural initiatives remain rare, however, and response to increasing immigration is likely to be volatile, especially given the current international situation.
As for that football match, however, one thing should not be forgotten. Plain and simple Brit-bashing, as well as anti-black racism, may have motivated the chants.
Never underestimate the depth of Spanish Anglophobia, which dates back to the Armada, and beyond. As King Phillip II is said to have put it: "Peace on Earth. And with the English, war."