Athletic Bilbao fans booed and whistled at three of their own players, Nico Williams, Aymeric Laporte and Unai Simon, as the trio presented the World Cup they had just won with Spain to the San Mames crowd before Athletic's La Liga match against Sevilla, which Athletic lost 1-3.
Most supporters applauded the three players, but the jeering from part of the stands caused unease across the whole country.
Spain coach Luis de la Fuente watched the game from the stands. Basque separatism is nothing new to him: he was born in Haro, in the La Rioja region that borders the Basque Country to the north, and came through Athletic's own youth academy, so it was natural for him to attend the match.
Trio of world champions from Bilbao
Saturday's match against Sevilla was Athletic's first of the season. La Liga had postponed the opening round for every club that released players to Spain's squad for the World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico, where La Roja won the title.
Laporte, a centre-back, and Simon, a goalkeeper, were both regular starters for Spain, while Williams came off the bench but set up Ferran Torres's winning goal in the final against Argentina. All three played a major part in de la Fuente's title-winning campaign.
Athletic wanted to mark the achievement, so the three players walked onto the San Mames pitch with the World Cup trophy before kick-off.
Basque nationalism and Athletic's identity
Basque separatism has a long tradition, and Athletic is one of its strongholds, a symbol of Basque national pride and identity. The club fields only players of Basque origin or those trained in Basque academies, a policy that can be read either as resistance to the globalisation of football and the mass signing of foreign stars for huge fees, or as a form of nationalism, even xenophobia.
Athletic's motto holds that with homegrown players and local support, the club has no need for foreigners, and it is one of the central institutions shaping Basque national consciousness. The club was founded in Bilbao, the largest city in the Basque Country, in 1898. In 1903, students from Bilbao founded a branch of the club in Madrid, called Athletic Madrid, which was renamed Atletico in 1947.
Athletic is one of only three clubs, along with Real Madrid and Barcelona, never to have been relegated from the Primera Division since it was founded in 1928. Athletic has won the Spanish title eight times, though not since 1984, 42 years ago. Atletico Madrid, founded by Basques, has been champion 11 times, most recently five years ago.
The Basque club is also one of four professional clubs in Spain, along with Barcelona, Real Madrid and Osasuna Pamplona, that is not run as a sports corporation but is instead owned by its socios, or club members.
Athletic's academy, Lezama, is regarded as one of the best in Spain and in Europe, and has produced several generations of top players. One of them was Rafael Moreno Aranzadi, known as Pichichi, whose nickname gives its name to the award for the top scorer in Spanish football. Robert Lewandowski won the Pichichi award in 2023, the first and so far only Polish player to do so.
Athletic's history with ETA
Athletic Bilbao's relationship with ETA, the nationalist armed group that fought for Basque independence, has been complicated. The club opposed terrorism, and in 1985 one of its directors, Juan Pedro Guzman, was kidnapped by ETA. The Basque Country's two biggest clubs, Athletic and Real Sociedad, protested strongly at the time.
In 1984, Athletic fans held a minute of silence at San Mames for Santiago Brouard, a politician from the Herri Batasuna party, which supported ETA's activities, who was murdered by GAL, a supposedly anti-terrorist organisation funded by the Spanish government that used terrorist methods to fight ETA.
In 2008, Athletic tried to hold a minute of silence for Isaias Carrasco, a Basque Socialist party politician murdered by ETA, but the club's ultras forced the referee to cut it short after just eight seconds.
Players who turned down Spain
No Athletic Bilbao player has ever refused to play for the Spanish national team. Only two Basque players have said no, and both played for Real Sociedad.
In December 1976, two players walked onto the pitch before a Spain international carrying a Basque flag: Inaxio Kortabarria, a Real Sociedad defender, and Jose Angel Iribar, Athletic's goalkeeper. Kortabarria played four matches for Spain before giving up international football in 1977 for ideological reasons, and did not go to the 1978 World Cup in Argentina.
The next was Mikel Aramburu, a Real Sociedad midfielder called up to Spain's under-20 side, who skipped the 1999 under-20 World Cup in Nigeria. In the book "Ojczyzna gola. Futbol i polityka w Hiszpanii" (Homeland of the Goal: Football and Politics in Spain), he explained that he did not want to play for La Roja, saying no one could force him to play for a national team he did not consider his own.
Two more players later gave up playing for Spain: defender Nacho, from Galicia, and defender Oleguer Presas, from Catalonia. For years, Spanish coaches have had no such problems, and representing La Roja is now considered an honour by players, even among declared separatists such as Barcelona's Gerard Pique, a Catalan who won the World Cup in 2010 and the European Championship in 2012.
Saturday's reaction from part of the San Mames crowd showed the issue still stirs controversy among supporters.
