Elma Saiz condemns Rajoy's words and attacks the Popular Party: "When the PP takes off its mask, that racism and xenophobia emerge."

The Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration and Government spokesperson Elma Saiz, regretted this Monday that the "racist statements" by former Executive president Mariano Rajoy about the French national football team have put Spain in a "diplomatic mess."

Saiz made these statements to journalists before participating in San Lorenzo de El Escorial (Madrid) in a summer course at the Complutense University on immigration. She was eventually asked about former president Rajoy's controversial words about the French national football players, saying that "they have a very high level, yes, but without Frenchmen." To this, the minister recalled that in recent days, "what the Popular Party has done with our main friendly country and commercial partner, which is France, is to veto the Treaty of Friendship in the Senate and now these unfortunate, racist and xenophobic statements."

She also added that Rajoy's statements "have gotten us into a small diplomatic mess and have evidently deserved several French ministers to say that these are inadmissible and racist." She also wanted to recall that Spain is "at a moment when an extremely important extraordinary regularization process has just concluded with a beautiful campaign titled 'where they come from, they come from building a country'." She concluded by saying: "This is the migratory policy against racist and xenophobic messages that seem to categorize citizens into different categories, that of an open, prosperous country, in which undoubtedly diversity is always something positive," not without first ending by saying that "when the PP takes off its mask, that racism and xenophobia emerge."