A victory off the pitch deserves recognition among the achievements collected this year by the player Vinicius Junior. For the first time in the history of Spanish football, racist offenses have been condemned by the judiciary. The offenders are three Valencia fans who, on May 21 of last year, insulted the Real Madrid star during a game at the Mestalla Stadium, in the city of Valencia. They were sentenced to eight months in prison and banned from football for two years.
"This first conviction for racism in sports is a victory for football and for the entire Spanish society," says Juan José Ríos Zaldívar, a lawyer responsible for the procedural area of the Grant Thornton audit in Spain and a lecturer in courses on Law applied to football. "It's a historic event that divides the sport into a before and after," says Esteban Ibarra, president of the Movement against Intolerance – a Madrid-based NGO that closely follows the player's career.
"There are two basic difficulties in condemning a racist fan in Spain," says lawyer Ríos Zaldívar. "The first is identifying the authors of the offense. The second is determining that there was a racist motivation. Many judges consider the offenses to be a consequence of the emotion provoked by a football match." In Spain, unlike in Brazil, there is no specific law against racism. The three Valencia fans were convicted based on Article 510 of the Penal Code. "It punishes attacks on a person's dignity for reasons of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, illness, and social condition, among other things," says lawyer Ríos Zaldívar.
The offenders admitted the crime and apologized to the player and the club, which served as a mitigating factor. It is not possible to evaluate whether the sentence was lenient due to the unprecedented nature of the punishment in the Spanish context.