Banana Racism: Alves Calls Spain “Backward”

Racial taunts against Barcelona defender Dani Alves drew widespread criticism with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and FIFA president Sepp Blatter joining the outrage along with millions of fans worldwide. He slammed back calling Spain “backward” as far as racism was concerned. The spectator has been banned for life, reports said.

Alves, a 30 year old Brazilian and a black, was playing a Spanish league match on Sunday night when a Villarreal fan threw a banana at him, indicating that Alves was an ape. Alves picked the banana up, peeled and ate some of it and threw the rest aside getting huge praise for his reaction. Football players, celebrities and politicians soon extended their support to the player by posting pictures of themselves eating bananas in social media sites. “I was just trying to use a positive attitude to counter a negative attitude,” Alves said on Monday night in an interview with Brazil’s Radio Globo. “The player Dani Alves gave a daring and strong response to racism in sports,” Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff said in a series of Twitter messages.

There have been several racist incidents in Spain with Alves suffering racial taunts first with Seville and then with Barcelona for more than ten years. Alves called fighting racism “a lost war” last year after Real Madrid fans abused him with monkey chants during a match.

Infoeditor