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07/10/2008: "Spain struggles to tackle sport racism"

Jaime Martin edits the Formula One section of Marca, Spain's biggest selling sports newspaper.

''It's been exaggerated in the news reports a bit. It was only four or five people who were doing this in the context of the competition between Alonso and Lewis," he says.

"It's certain that the insults were racist, but if Lewis was bald the insults would have related to his baldness."

Like Mr Martin, many Spaniards do not see much difference between racist insults based on the colour of someone's skin and other forms of verbal abuse.

[ Exactly! Racial name calling really doesn't mean any more to those who use it than other forms of verbal abuse. Even someone who is married to someone of another race or who is best friends with them is as likely to make a racial remark as make a remark about anything else different about them during a heated argument. ]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7229551.stm