The duel between Athletic Club and the Spanish It has not yet arrived and the controversy is already served. The Basque club announced this Thursday that in Saturday’s match will honor Martín Zabaletamountaineer known for being the first Spaniard to summit Everest in 1980. However, his decision was not liked at all on social networks, since the mountaineer He wore an ikurriña with the emblem of ETA to the top.
The people of Bilbao intend for Zabaleta to take the kick-off of the match, but the detail will be clouded by the wave of criticism among numerous users of social networks.
“Martín Zabaleta is from ETA. Terrorist scum”, “tremendous mistake” or “For things like this tribute to a pro-ETA member, I stopped being part of Athletic many years ago.“are just some of the comments that this controversial tribute has generated.
“Hernaniarra Martin Zabaleta and the Sherpa Pasang Temba, the first to place the Basque flag at the summit of Everest on May 14, 1980, They will take the kick-off at San Mamés this Saturday in the clash against RCD Espanyol“Athletic announced in a statement.
Furthermore, after explaining the feat, he adds: “On Saturday, October 19, at 2:00 p.m., They will appear together on the San Mamés playing field, accompanied by Jose Angel Iribar and Alex Txikonto take the kick-off before the match between Athletic Club and RCD Espanyol. The fans, the same ones that vibrated 45 years ago glued to the radio bulletins and newspaper headlines that opened with the Basque success on Everest, will pay tribute to them in La Catedral.”
After the controversy generated by these words, the club has not yet commented and The planned tribute seems to be carried out normally by the club.at least for the moment.
However, part of the fans that will be present at San Mamés have already made it clear that will not be part of the tributethus showing their disagreement with the act proposed by Athletic.
