Fabien Roussel, leader of the French communist party, criticized Rajoy’s statement, to write in a post on X: “They can’t help but show racism to try and upset our beautiful French team!”
Pierre-Alexandre Anglade, a centrist MP who heads the committee for European affairs in the French National Assembly, he called the speech “a great insult against our French team and against our country.”
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) he said: “It is a shame that Mariano Rajoy, who has become the President of the Spanish Government, makes this kind of statement.”
Rajoy’s article also hit out at the left-wing Spaniard for saying he doesn’t like “the Devils or the reds,” in reference to the Belgian soccer team, known as the Red Devils, which lost to Spain on Friday.
A member of the right-wing Christian Democratic Popular Party, Rajoy led the Spanish government between December 2011 and May 2018.
His comments come just a week after Hebe Casado, deputy governor of Argentina’s Menduza state, described the French team as “an African team, without any manners,” in a social media post on X after France beat Paraguay 1-0, prompting the French Embassy in Argentina. to ban him from entering the area.
