The Rubiales' RFEF will decide on the sporting independence of the Basque Country
The arrival of a coalition government in Spain has altered many fronts in society. The management of the coronavirus leaves a disturbing shadowy picture of how Sánchez's partners influence the future of Spain and their own interests. While Podemos is trying to tackle its populist policies with the judiciary, the Royal House and the security services, the nationalist parties have opened up the melon so that the territorial teams of the Basque Country and Catalonia can compete in World Cups and European Championships.
The Basque Country has taken the first step and has presented itself in Switzerland to officially request the integration of the Basque football team as a full member of FIFA and UEFA. A group of directors led by the President of the Basque Federation, Luis María Elustondo, and the Director of Sports of the Basque Government, Jon Redondo, presented the legal and administrative documentation both at UEFA's headquarters in Nyon and at FIFA's headquarters in Zurich.
It all started with an intentional slip of the tongue by Elustondo in an interview in November 2020. He could never go back on his words no matter how much nuance he wanted to offer in other media. EH Bildu and the PNV also leaked that part of their support for Pedro Sánchez included the RFEF making it easier for the Basque Country to compete with its own team. Politically, this is another debt Sanchez accumulates in order to remain in government. Administratively it is a commitment for the CSD and the RFEF who will have the last word. From a sporting point of view, it is a loss for Spain, since Luis Enrique has players like Kepa, Unai Simón, Oyarzabal and Iñigo Martínez to play his international matches.
The Basque Federation has received an unexpected boost from the fact that Spain has been allocated Kosovo on its way to the Qatar 2022 World Cup. Spain did not recognise its independence from Serbia owing to a domestic policy problem with Catalonia and the Basque Country, as this may set a complicated precedent. What they do not count on is that the Kosovar prime minister himself dissociated himself from any analogy in 2018, stating that "we would never recognise the independence of Catalonia. Kosovo and Catalonia have nothing in common. Kosovo was born out of the disintegration of the Yugoslav Federation, in a bloody process of everyone against everyone. This is not the case in Spain, where civil and political rights are respected".
On 31 March and 8 September 2021 Spain will face Kosovo. The first match should be on Spanish soil and the second at the Fadil Vokrri stadium in Pristina. This is always conditional because the government, the foreign ministry, the CSD and the RFEF will have to decide what position Spain takes on the two matches. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, has already warned that this issue is dealt with under "FIFA rules", but has not specified how the national team will approach the two matches. Sources consulted by Atalayar say that the most consistent thing would be to play both matches on a neutral field. This would avoid uncomfortable situations with visas, flags and anthems.
Spain has already managed the presence of Kosovar sport. At the 2018 Mediterranean Games in Tarragona, Kosovar athletes paraded under the flag of their country's Olympic Committee and received their visas on a form separate from their passports. The Kosovar karatekas who attended the World Cup in Madrid that same year were treated as members of the World Karate Federation, without reference to their country. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) went further and threatened Spain not to grant it the right to organise any international competitions if it did not allow the symbols of Kosovo.
The Basque and Catalan federations know that it is time for them to achieve their sporting objective and, in the process, come closer to their independence. They also know that FIFA has had one federation per state since it was founded in 1904 by Belgium, Denmark, Real Madrid, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. In 1905, England became a member due to its development of football. England asked to add Wales and Scotland in 1910, and Northern Ireland in 1911 to complete the four Federations that make up the United Kingdom. In 1988 the Faroe Islands were accepted as an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark. In 2016, Gibraltar was admitted by a judgment of the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) as Spain had refused to accept it.
With the budgets approved thanks to the support of Basque and Catalan nationalists, the hot potato of independence passes through Luis Rubiales' RFEF. The procedure initiated by the Basque Federation will end in a consultation with the Federation which will have to take a position on whether the Basque Country can compete at an international level. The political pressure will be transferred to an actor close to Pedro Sánchez and the triangle will be completed by the President's biographer, and she is proving to be a solvent president of the CSD, Irene Lozano.