SPAIN has a reputation for tolerance and on Wednesday night we were privileged to witness the lazy, relaxed tolerance of the nation displayed in gloriously unequivocal circumstances. What’s all the fuss about? Don’t worry about it. You’re making too much of it. Who honestly cares if people are insulted because they are black?
That tolerance was more shocking than the insults themselves. That cheery, easy, smiling assumption that racism really doesn’t matter a bit. Bigots who make a nuisance of themselves is one thing; all countries have bigots. What defines a country is the degree to which it tolerates its bigots.
I am most emphatically not talking about politically correct responses from politically correct politicians and administrators and other geeks in suits. I am talking about the response of real people. People such as you and me. People who perceive something and say instinctively: that can’t be right. That’s awful. I hate it. It is, in fact, intolerable.
Perhaps that’s what democracy really means: that when enough people say “you just can’t do that”, you really can’t. Sport plays many complex roles in the societies in which it exists and one of these is, again and again, to ventilate the issue of tolerance.
Glenn Hoddle was dismissed as England coach because he said things about the disabled that provoked a heart-felt reaction across the country. The head of the England football team just can’t go around saying things like that.
If Sven-Göran Eriksson, the incumbent England head coach, had referred to an opponent as “a black s***”, he would have been dismissed that same day. Absolutely and without question. No debate, no inquiry, no soul-searching. Such a remark would not be tolerated.
But Luis Aragonés, the coach of the Spain football team, made the same remark, it was caught on a microphone and the whole thing was met with a shrug of the shoulders from the great mass of the Spanish people. Pressed on the matter, Aragonés responded with an anti-English tirade and an instruction to the world to mind its own business. No one so much as suggested that this might be a sackable offence. Such an idea was laughable. That Spain could tolerate such a remark, such a revelation, such a response, is strange to us in Britain. Really rather disturbing.
On, then, to the match itself. It took place in a time warp. It was as if the players were wearing ankle-high boots, playing with a heavy brown ball with laces, with short, Brylcreemed hair, in flickering black and white, while assembled journalists wrote that the orb was propelled into the onion bag past the hapless custodian.
Monkey chants at black players were part of English footballing life in the 1980s. These days, the English find such a chant deeply shocking. This is not to praise English football supporters too highly, of course. Some sing that one high-profile manager is a paedophile and find that a refreshing and amusing thing to do. But to attempt to start a racist chant against black players, that would be to drop a brick, to commit a terrible solecism, to court instant ostracism, to become like a Bateman cartoon: The Man Who Monkey Chanted. No, you can’t do that.
But in Madrid on Wednesday night, the Bernabéu echoed to the sound of the monkeys. Alas, my Spanish was not good enough to interpret the song that went with it, but I now have a translation: “If you’re not f****** black jump up and down.”
The point here is not to claim the moral high ground for England in a point-scoring battle against Spain. The point is to nail that easy, relaxed tolerance for racism — that tolerance that is the blood-brother to racism itself.
I haven’t forgotten that England supporters distinguished themselves by singing “I’d rather be a Paki than a Turk” at the infamous England-Turkey match in Sunderland 20 months ago. The England supporters thought that was all right. But the same people would not have tolerated racial abuse of black players. England is not a society from which racism has been extirpated, but the most obvious and unsubtle manifestations of racism have at least become taboo: banned, despised, anathema, the sin of witchcraft.
We find it shocking that in Spain the canaille make monkey chants. But it is far more shocking to realise that this behaviour is considered acceptable. The Spanish press were utterly relaxed about the whole business. Fernando Garrido, the press officer for the Spanish federation, hilariously blamed the English press for the chanting: “This hasn’t happened in the Spanish league and Spain for many years. So you (English reporters) should ask yourselves what you have done to contribute to all this.”
ABC, the Spanish daily, was censorious; but only about the English “witch-hunt” against Aragonés. It suggested that the English press was playing the race card because the England team had played so badly. Well, yes, England played dreadfully — but every English reporter said so and did so with frank glee. It’s a good tale, after all. More significantly, every English person at the ground was profoundly shocked by the throwback racist atmosphere in which the game was played.
You can’t do that. But the Spanish response has been to say: yes we can, and we will, and what’s all the fuss about anyway? Your team made some bad tackles and we know that is the real issue here.
I think not. The real issue is not the tackling, not the bad football, not the chanting and not the remarks of Aragonés. The real issue is what the match revealed. And it was the revelation of the heart of a nation. It was the revelation of Spain. No, Spain does not stand before us a racist society. Rather, it is revealed as one that is benignly tolerant of racism. It is a nation that takes an avuncular, easy-going approach to something that our society has come to regard as despicable. Spain: the nation that finds racism tolerable.
The Spanish went back on a pre-match agreement and displayed advertising material for the Madrid bid to host the Olympic Games of 2012. This was a deliberate nose-fingering at the London bid. I am not sure that this bit of mischief did the Madrid bid much good. I wonder, does the city of the monkey chant really want the Olympic Games? There tend to be, you know, a fair number of black people at the Olympics. They tend to win at least their fair share of medals as well. Ask Hitler.
One of the continuing paradoxes about sport is that it is simultaneously a magnet for racists and a perfect refutation of all racist arguments. While those who make a big deal about not being f****** black jump up and down, Thierry Henry plays with sublime wit and invention, Nasser Hussain transforms English cricket, Jason Robinson jinks England to victory in the rugby union World Cup and Kelly Holmes runs away with the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award.
Sport, as we have long agreed, does not build character. It reveals character. Mostly, it reveals the character of individuals. But on Wednesday night, sport revealed the character of a nation. On Wednesday night, we had a revelation of the nature of Spain, and it was profoundly shocking.
Britain is not a perfect society. It is still (like all societies) a racist society. But, hell and damnation, we have at least gone beyond massed monkey chanting. You can’t do that. I mean, you really can’t.
