On September 8, Florentino Pérez welcomed the delegation of Inter Milan at the Santiago Bernabéu, in Real Madrid’s first Champions League match, while Juan Jesús Vivas, president of Ceuta, visited Brussels to talk about the “migratory invasion” suffered in the Autonomous City. The echoes from the stands of the white coliseum, where numerous Ceutan flags were displayed along with slogans like “Ceuta is not for sale, Ceuta is defended,” reached the Belgian city.
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Thus, when Vivas woke up the next day to the news, he called his friend Florentino to thank him for the gesture the club had made. “For us, it had enormous value and that’s what we hold on to, that the club supports us without any doubt,” explains to EL MUNDO, Nicola Cecchi, Ceuta’s Councilor for Commerce, Tourism, Employment, and Sports. In that call, Pérez already told Vivas that his intention was to make a visit at some point to express his support in person and that he would bring with him the club’s honorary president, José Martínez Sánchez, Pirri, originally from that city.
The message hangs in the air until the issue of the shirts erupts when Mbappé, Vinicius, and Konaté decide not to follow a club directive coordinated with Elche for all 22 players to wear the slogan of the Valencian Business Association (AVE) campaign: “We are all Caballas.” The players considered that the shirt carried a certain political charge in that match against the Elche team last Tuesday at the Martínez Valero stadium. The gesture of folding the shirt and taking it off during the handshake spread like wildfire on social media.
Real Madrid moves to damage control, and on Wednesday morning, it is Florentino himself who calls his friend Vivas to say that he intends to visit the city along with Pirri and the head of Institutional Relations, Emilio Butragueño, who had already been to the Autonomous City to inaugurate the Real Madrid Foundation football school. He tells him that a slot has opened up in his schedule and, although the visit had not been planned in advance, he would like to show his support in person. “I don’t know if it’s because of the shirts or not, I don’t think so,” assures Cecchi.
Besides the president’s call, members of Real Madrid made other communications about what happened with other important figures of Madridismo in Ceuta, such as Miguel Ángel Montano, president of the Peña Madridista de Ceuta. “They told me the players were going to apologize publicly,” Montano reveals to EL MUNDO, although they later clarified that it would be more of an explanation of their motivation which, according to the white club employee, had to do with the players’ migrant origins. So far, only Mbappé has offered some clarification about what happened. “It’s just that the other day it wasn’t about immigrants, it was about Ceuta,” Montano exclaims.
Visit
The president of the Peña Madridista de Ceuta will be one of the guests at the reception that Vivas will offer to Florentino Pérez and his delegation this morning at 11:30, at the City Hall of the Autonomous City. A reception that the city council itself informed Montano about without wanting to reveal the guest of that welcome until it was Madrid who confirmed the trip to Ceuta.
The ties between Madrid and Ceuta extend to both presidents. Florentino Pérez, besides his friendship with Vivas, according to accounts in the streets of Ceuta, had a water tanker ship, owned by one of his companies, that supplied water to the city when the two reservoirs that supply it, Renegado and Infierno, had supply problems. On the other hand, Pirri’s family, besides being originally from Ceuta, was one of the owners of the bus company in the Autonomous City.
