“Real Madrid never gives up” is the motto that was displayed on the mosaic that the fans at the south end of the Bernabéu used to harangue their team before the Champions League semi-final match against Bayern. Considering the epic that usually accompanies the whites in this type of match, which they showed again this Wednesday (2-1), this maxim may seem accurate, but Real Zaragoza fans have felt, in some way, upset.
Many people have criticized this ‘tyfo’ alluding to history, and this phrase has its origin in the National Episodes of Benito Pérez Galdós, who, in said novels, made several allusions to the Aragonese capital.
“Zaragoza does not give up. They will reduce it to dust: no brick upon brick will remain of its historic houses; its hundred temples will fall; its floor will open, vomiting flames; and the foundations will be thrown into the air; the tiles will fall to the bottom of the wells; “but among the rubble and among the dead, there will always be a living language to say that Zaragoza does not surrender,” said the best representative of the Spanish realist novel of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who narrated the events that took place in the Aragonese capital during the two sieges to which the city was subjected by Napoleon’s army.
Zaragoza adopted Galdós’ phrase decades ago, changing ‘no’ to ‘never’, and turned it into one of the songs most heard in the Romareda stadium. Hence, the blue and white followers do not quite understand that other clubs make it their own.
It already happened in 2017, when Osasuna wanted to release a shirt with this same motto, and after this medium published information about it and criticism arose, they backed down and did not market it, although they did print it on the tribune of the El Sadar stadium.
Now it is Real Madrid fans who ‘copy’ a motto so identified among Real Zaragoza fans…
