Rajoy jokes about the French national team. Around his joke, a few facts stand out. France began to be an unbeatable football power thanks to its Africans. The French far right has denied those Africans the ability to represent their country. All members of the French national team are French. The first fact is factually indisputable. The second is the fragment of violence that a joke usually needs: the auschwitz of so many Jewish jokes. “The momentary anesthesia of the heart,” as Bergson said so beautifully. The third is the tautology that Rajoy breaks: “It also has a very high-level squad. That is, without French players.” And, indeed, he breaks it with the obligatory seriousness of someone who does not laugh at his own joke. I will focus on the tautology for an interesting counterfactual: if Rajoy had talked about the Moroccan national team. 23 of the 26 members of the French team were born in France. 19 of the 26 of the Moroccan team were born abroad. A very high-level squad. That is, without Moroccans. The breaking of the tautology would be the same. But the reactions, no. What really scandalizes about Rajoy’s joke is something that is assumed: “That is, they are black.” Racism. Which certainly would not operate in the Moroccan case. And yet this Brahim is white, very white.
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Taking it seriously, Rajoy’s joke includes an implicit criterion: being born in the territory of a nation is not enough to be a national. The Le Pen doctrine, oh yes et oui et oh là, là. The Trump doctrine, oh, yes, but the Supreme Court saved the ius soli in extremis. But more than the doctrine, the law displayed in the Spanish Civil Code that Mariano Rajoy Brey, Property Registrar and former Prime Minister, has complied with and enforced. The phrase applied to France is a scandalous joke. In Spain, it is inflexible legal orthodoxy. And the outrage of so many petits sociaux-démocrates has its point of involuntary comedy. A country of ius sanguinis tearing its clothes because a branded Galician applies jokingly to France the rule that Spain applies seriously, with seal and fee, every working day of the year.
But, anyway, let’s see if with the grandchildren’s law Spain, the red one, from now on ensures the world’s sporting supremacy