The son of the deceased Duchess of Alba and the still president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation are not exactly friends. Their differences began in 2017, when Cayetano Martinez de Irujo He agreed to preside over the Sportsmen’s Association. They ended with a battle in the courts, which gave victory to the Duke of Arjona. This Friday, the aristocrat has spoken loud and clear about Luis Rubiales: “He is a dangerous guy, people are afraid of him, he threatens, he is a gangster.”
The rider has described Rubiales’ press conference as “embarrassing” and has assured on Telecinco: “The version he has given of the events is delusional. He is someone who is not in his right mind, who challenges the Prime Minister, the entire world… And on top of that, he justifies the gesture in the box. It is incomprehensible”. Cayetano Martínez de Irujo has not only pointed out to the president but to the entire board: “That assembly is based on an absolutely clientelist and supposedly mafia system, because of everything that moves in there and how it moves. What it did to me is He has been left on the stretcher, because he has far exceeded himself over and over again, without limits. He is a character that has no waste”.
Cayetano Martínez de Irujo, about the lawsuit that Rubiales filed against him: “I called him a mafioso, I called him… I don’t really remember the truth, what he is proving he is.”
Also, like Tamara, no one supported him. #The last night https://t.co/to520kpow3 pic.twitter.com/VNXtcn5QxL
— The last night (@laultimanochetv) August 25, 2023
It is not the first time that Cayetano refers to Rubiales in these terms and for this reason the one from Motril sued him “for illegitimate interference with the right to honor” and claimed compensation of 30,000 euros. The Court of Valencia ruled in favor of the president of the RFEF (although he set the compensation at 3,000 euros), but the rider appealed and the Supreme Court finally agreed with him on the grounds of “freedom of expression” and annulled the fine.
This is how he spoke then: “Rubiales destroyed the Athletes Association that it took us two years of hard work to create for the rest of the sports that had nowhere to lean, not like the six that he manages. We had achieved 500,000 euros thanks to tools such as the program Spain competes and we had money that lotteries were going to give us. But he took it all for no reason.” And he added: “I did not submit to his obscene guidelines or lower my head before the dictatorial way of considering what he intended to do. It hurt me not only personally, but also for the work we did altruistically for 65 sports. It is unfortunate and Shameful that the person who runs Spain’s rich sport would kill the rest instead of supporting it.”