A Country - Spain - at the Service of a Football Club - Real Madrid

I won't defend anyone who doesn’t follow the rules; if someone is caught breaking a law, they must pay for it. However, FC Barcelona has recently become a constant target for the right wing Spanish press, and mostly Madrid's. In the last few weeks they have been having a grand time at Messi’s expense. So it seems like a good time to air out some of the dirty laundry in Real Madrid’s history.

1. The Spanish government approved a law in 2006 that dramatically reduced the income tax rate for foreigners, from 43% to 24%, during the 5 first years of Spanish residency. The goal was to attract “qualified people,” but the real shocker was that this law was passed just as David Beckham was being signed for Real Madrid, so the club and the player reaped big from this law, so much so that this law is known as the “Beckham Act.”
 
2. The journalist Carles Torras has just published a book, La historia oculta del Real Madrid (The Hidden History of Real Madrid), explaining the whole network of friends and political influences that brought Real Madrid to be known as “the government’s team.”

3. It is surprising that several polemic corruption cases like the “Bernabeu's corner” (a public library project converted into a mall) or the “Sports City” (where the city council paid €22 million for terrains with a theoretical value of €488,000) have been forgotten. Nobody defended the Tax Administration’s interests then the way they do now with Messi. And conversely, FC Barcelona has never enjoyed such kind treatment form the Spanish administration.

4. Suspicions of different treatment for Real Madrid come to mind nowadays with all the gossip surrounding Real Madrid's big star Cristiano Ronaldo’s renewal in 2015, the year in which his contract with Real Madrid is up. The new contract will have to meet the new law modified in 2010 that would increase the tax rate from 24% to 43%. It is unbelievable that Messi is on the spot because of tax fraud but not Cristiano and Real Madrid, all due to preferential treatment by the Spanish administration. A close follow up on this will be necessary.

5. The Spanish national football team won the World Cup in 2010. The bonus for this cup was paid in South Africa (where the World Cup took place), and not in Spain, in order to avoid any interference by the Spanish Tax Administration. This has not been an issue of concern in Spain, compared to the aggressiveness shown against Messi’s finances. We are talking millions of euros here.

Other remarkable cases

6. In 1973 —in contrast with the easygoing treatment to Real Madrid— Barça had to overcome the reluctance of the Foreign Currency Office of the Minister of Economy in order to free up the funds needed to pay Amsterdam’s Ajax for the transfer of Johan Cruyff.

7. Back in 1972, loose interpretation of the legislation allowed Real Madrid and other clubs to hire players from South America with Spanish family links. Meanwhile, FC Barcelona got only denials (the Argentinian player Heredia lost 1 year before he was allowed to come to Barça). 

8. The Di Stefano affair (1955): the famous player was taken away from Barça, who had already signed him up, due to the intervention of high government officials to secure his irregular transfer Real Madrid 

 
9. The case surrounding Jose Plaza, President of the Referees Committee (1965-1989,) who meanwhile was personally in charge of referee nominations for the Spanish league, and who was successful in barring FC Barcelona from winning League Championship. 

10. FC Barcelona had earned a special entry in the Spanish police’s secret files as a “subversive organization” for decades. At one point, FC Barcelona faced a 6 month shutdown of their stadium for booing the Spanish national anthem.

11. It is well known that the President of Catalonia Lluís Companys was put before a firing squad by Franco’s executioners, but it is also true that FC Barcelona’s president was also shot dead by fascist troops during the Spanish Civil War. 

FC Barcelona President Josep Suñol
murdered by Spanish nationalists

Real Madrid has enjoyed full complicity from all kinds of high ranking government officials —from Rubalcaba, Rajoy, Wert nowadays, to Inocencio Arias, Raimundo Saporta, and others in the past— as well as government workers in mid-level positions. It is no coincidence that Real Madrid’s scenario has witnessed the biggest influx of major public works in Europe in the last decade. This is a clear example of misusing the central government’s resources for spurious purposes, crony capitalism. The Cibeles model. A corporate culture rooted in the environment of economic interventionism, the friends and the favors with which Real Madrid benefits on their own behalf using the structures of the state, which is light years away from the Catalan business culture. and which all by itself would justify independence for the Catalans.

In Madrid they have a clear view that they must attack Catalans (not with weapons quite yet) by land, air and sea, and that’s precisely what they do. All is fair against the Catalans. And FC Barcelona is a key piece for Catalonia, they know it. With Messi’s case they can put Catalans in a tight spot: either we disown Messi or we support a criminal. It's a clever tactic they can use because they control the state apparatus against us. Messi’s case coincided with other contentious proceedings in the court of law, and all this was translated in Madrid’s newspapers as a Sicilian-style Catalonia, a huge Corleone family. Madrid wants to spread this false image in order to damage the Catalan cause. If we have to be honest about it, any resemblance to Corleone’s affairs is closer to Madrid and the central government administration.

Àlex Furest, Economist


Spanish