Bildu announced on Wednesday that it would form a front with the pro-independence parties to force the government and the PSOE, which are in a weak position, to make a legislative reform that would allow Catalonia, Galicia and the Basque Country to have football teams and be able to participate in international tournaments, such as the European Championship or the World Cup. Bildu’s announcement was made just 72 hours after Spain’s great success in the European Championship, winning its fourth trophy with a team with a large presence of Basque and Navarrese footballers. The PP has responded by registering a law to protect the participation of the Spanish team not only in football but in all sports in the face of the separatist offensive.
Specifically, the bill, which will be registered this Friday in Congress and to which LA RAZÓN has had access, seeks to repeal the legislative transfer that the Government made to the PNV in the last legislature (in a Law of December 30, 2022), by allowing regional teams to participate in international championships in two specific cases: if the sporting modality or specialty has historical roots in that Community, such as Basque pelota in the Basque Country; or, in the event that there is a sport in which the regional federation had been part of an international federation before the Spanish one.
«In such cases, the participation of the regional sports federation in official international competitions will take place after prior agreement with the High Council of Sports. Such agreement will entail joint support for the integration of the regional federation into the international federation», states article 48.2 of the Sports Law, a precept that the PP wants to remove to prevent it from providing shelter to a wide variety of sports modalities that allow autonomous regions, such as the Basque Country or Catalonia, to participate in international championships at the expense of Spain.
In the explanatory statement of the bill, which seeks to guarantee “the international representation” of Spanish sports federations in international competitions, it is pointed out that the legislative modification of the last legislature “violates the exclusive competence of the State in relation to the international representation of Spanish federated sport.” In the opinion of the Popular Party, it alters “the regime of participation” in international competitions “by allowing” that there are autonomous sports federations that can be present in European or world competitions in certain modalities or specialties.
However, it seems difficult for the PP’s bill to prosper because neither the PSOE nor Sumar nor Podemos, parties with a national scope, seem willing to support it, since they prefer to allow concessions of this type to the nationalists. The Popular Party would garner, at most, the support of 171 (PP, Vox and UPN) of the 176 deputies needed. In any case, the law will allow the debate to be reopened at a politically sensitive time since Spain’s triumph in the Eurocup has fully infiltrated politics: either through Bildu, which seeks to create a front to expand the possibilities of forming Basque national teams in all types of sports; or through unfortunate comments by pro-independence politicians, claiming the role of Basques and Catalans over the rest of the Spanish; or, through the cold relationship of the Spanish players with Pedro Sánchez.
The separatist attempts may bear fruit given that they see a very weakened Sánchez, capable of making concessions that, until recently, he rejected, such as the Amnesty Law itself.