Spain: King's Cup troubled by independence dispute

The day before the King's Cup final match between Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao is marked by disputes over advocacy of independence, while over 5,000 supporters of both teams start to flow from Madrid for the match, which will be played tomorrow night at 9:30pm in the Vicente Calderon, where Atletico Madrid usually plays. (Real Madrid refused to use the larger and more prestigious Santiago Bernabeu, stadium due to work in progress in the sports facility). The dispute was prompted in the past days by the Chairwoman of the Madrid Community, Esperanza Aguirre (PP), who reminded that the national anthem and King Juan Carlos were met with hoots three years ago, during the final involving the same two teams at the Mestalla Stadium in Valencia. Aguirre asked, in case new offence is made to national symbols, the permission to suspend the game or play the match with closed doors. Reactions soon came: the political opposition to the People's Party and practically the whole world of sports spoke out against Aguirre. The Chairman of Barcelona, Sandro Rosell, and the Deputy Chairman Carles Vilarrubi, pointed out to the media: ''What we want to do is to play football, not carry out political actions''. This is occurring after the request made by Basque and Catalan nationalist and independence-advocating political parties before the Congress regarding participation of the national teams of autonomous communities in international competitions; however, they did not urge supporters to hoot the national anthem during the King's Cup final in any way. On the contrary, the Basque platform Esait urged supporters to do so through its webpage, inciting people ''to claim independence as loudly as possible during the whole match, especially when the anthem of those who have always denied official recognition to us is being played''. This heated atmosphere is further worsened by the demonstration ''in defence of the flag'' summoned for tomorrow in the centre of Madrid by several far-right groups and authorised by the High Court of Justice after having been banned by the Prefecture. For the sports event, which was labelled as ''high-risk'' the police organised massive security measures, involving over 2,300 police agents, traffic wardens, policemen on horse and helicopters deployed all over the city and near the stadium. The Interior Minister, Jorge Fernandez Diaz, launched an appeal to calm and announced that he is considering making private football clubs pay for security expenses: in times of recession, this is a sort of fixed tax, similar to the tax imposed on bike sports events.(ANSAmed).