Spain's National Sports Council is weighing up action of its own accord after Javier Tebas, president of La Liga and vice-president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, compared the output of Real Madrid's television channel to the propaganda machinery of the Nazi regime. The comments have triggered a fresh confrontation between the two sides.
Tebas posted the message on his social media accounts on Friday. He accused Real Madrid's channel of casting the club as a perpetual victim, cherry-picking facts that feed its sense of grievance while stripping out the context needed to understand and verify what actually happened.
According to the La Liga president, Real Madrid's hierarchy fronts a group of official mouthpieces led by the club's TV channel. Their method, he argued, rests on selecting convenient events, repeating grievances, sowing doubt and firing accusations at opponents.
"This method recalls the propaganda mechanisms exploited by Goebbels, the propaganda minister in Nazi Germany, through systematic repetition, the creation of an enemy, and the subjugation of facts to the narrative," Tebas added. He stressed the comparison targeted propaganda techniques, not Nazi ideology or Real Madrid's supporters.
Real Madrid respond with a sharp attack
The reply came quickly. Real Madrid demanded Tebas resign immediately from both his post as La Liga president and his role as vice-president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, branding him "a genuine scourge on Spanish football".
An official statement set out the club's categorical rejection of the remarks, insisting that "it can never be tolerated for a person holding two senior positions in Spanish football to resort to comparisons with the propaganda methods used by the Nazi regime". Real Madrid called the matter extremely serious.
Tebas's clarification that the comparison does not relate to Nazi ideology softens nothing, the club said, deeming his words "deeply offensive, morally repugnant, and institutionally improper".
With the National Sports Council now mulling intervention, the crisis has shifted onto far more sensitive ground. What began as traded criticism has become a public confrontation with calls for the La Liga president's head, and the next official steps will decide where it goes.