In Spain, two incidents involving the national football teams of Morocco and Peru caused a riot on Monday evening. The Moroccan national team was racially treated by staff at the Eurostars Madrid Tower hotel and Peruvian football players were attacked by the police.
On Tuesday evening, Morocco and Peru will play against each other in a friendly match in the Spanish capital. The teams arrived in Madrid on Monday afternoon. Employees of the hotel where the Moroccans are staying, Hotel Eurostars Madrid Tower in the northern district of La Paz, have made racist comments about the players on social media. They wrote, among other things, “we shit on Ramadan and their shitty beliefs” and “malditos moros de mierda‘ [verdomde Moren]. ‘Moor’ is a term of abuse in Spain for Muslim North Africans. The texts also included a selfie of a group of employees who were in the kitchen preparing the food for the players.
Read also: ‘Spaniards don’t understand how deep-rooted racism is in society’
The employees’ statements went viral and sparked anger among the Moroccan community in Spain. Most people don’t find the racism completely surprising. “Nothing new in Spain,” writes Safae Ziani on Instagram. “In Spain they have always been racist against Moroccans. We experience it every day,” says Karima Haji.
The national police have arrested one of the hotel employees. The hotel management regrets the event. “At Eurostars Tower we condemn any act of racism. We apologize to all those who have felt offended. The employees behind these statements have been fired, charged or arrested and must now answer for their actions,” the hotel manager said in a statement to Spanish media.
Moroccan national coach Walid Regragui responded to the matter in a press conference on Monday evening. “In our religion we are taught to forgive and so we forgive him [de medewerker die is opgepakt]”, he said with a smile. “He is a boy in his early twenties. He has no idea and one day he will understand that what he thinks about Muslims is not the reality.”
Peru
Two kilometers to the south, in front of the Hotel NH Collection Madrid Eurobuilding in the business district of Hispanoamérica, a fight took place a few hours later between Peru’s internationals and the Spanish police. The players were standing in front of the hotel to greet their fans when unrest broke out. Footage shows how one of the officers starts to push goalkeeper Pedro Gallese, who plays for the American Orlando City SC, hard, while other officers take the flags from the fans and throw them on the ground. A fight breaks out. Gallese was taken to the police station, but he was released after the intervention of the Peruvian embassy.
Anti-racism movements speak of a structural problem in the police, in which migrants or non-Spaniards are always dealt with harshly. The police deny this. In a statement, the police said they had to intervene because the players had exceeded the safe distance between them and the fans.