Atletico Madrid History

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Updated: 2026-08-30

* Out of the Real world
* atletico_stadiums_metropolitano_autive.pdf
* Nobody F*cks with the Jesus
* Lies about Atletico Aviacion
* How the Gil family became owners of Atleti and why many people hat them for that

* Branding of Club Atlético de Madrid: Local or Global? https://hbsp.harvard.edu/product/NA0369-PDF-ENG

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Out of the Real world (May 8th 1999)
====================================

By Richard Whittle

.. _what_does_atletico_madrid_represent_in_spain_and_throughout_the_world_of_football:

What does Atletico Madrid represent in Spain and throughout the world of football?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Madrid's other team and, to all Glasgow Celtic fans, one of the most
vicious bunch of thugs ever to take the field in a European Cup tie. El
Atleti have always lived under the giant shadow of Real; a pauper
compared to Real's aristocracy. While Real are all style, Atletico have
earned a reputation as the thought police of world football. However,
times have changed and the likes of Juninho have blunted the hard edge.

.. _is_this_reputation_justified:

Is this reputation justified?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Atletico have had to fight for everything. Franco favoured Real who
deemed them unworthy of even rival status. The club has always been on
the defensive, reflected by their choice of coaches. The master of the
catenacio Helenio Herrera brought the club two Liga titles. Austrian
disciplinarian Max Merkel followed him, but the club's uncompromising
reputation was built around Juan Carlos Lorenzo. He played for the
infamous Argentinian side, Estudaintes, in the late 60's and was more
than eager to emplor the same tactics in Europe. They kicked their way
to the European Cup final in 1974 before falling to Bayern Munich in a
replay. Lorenzo's boys had two sent off in the semi-final against the
Bhoys of Celtic and a reputation was cemented.

.. _who_kept_it_going:

Who kept it going?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

While the playing staff have failed to live up to the 70's hard-men,
president Jesus Gil has kept the club in the headlines through
fist-fights, public slanging matches and all manner of threats and
outrageous proclamation.s Thirty coaches have come and gone since the
mayor of Marbella took over in the mid-80s. He reduced Arrigo Sacchi to
tears and early retirement, but has put his money where his mouth is and
given his coaches untold financial backing. Radi Antic is a brave man
though, returning for his second spell under the axe-man Gil.

.. _how_is_the_club_financed_and_does_the_future_look_bright:

How is the club financed and does the future look bright?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gil's millions are evident all round the club. The city of Marbella
sponsors the club and one of Gil's property development offices are
under the main stand. As long as Gil keeps the money coming in Atletico
won't have many sleepless nights.

.. _the_players:

THE PLAYERS
-----------

.. _who_are_the_clubs_all_time_greats:

Who are the club's all-time greats?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Atletico are more famous for their coaches than players. Spain's
greatest goalkeeper and national hero, Ricardo Zamora, led the team to
two titles in the early 40s and Helenio Herrera did the same 10 years
later. However, it is Vicente Calderon who deserves the greatest credit.
The late president fought a constant battle to keep the club afloat
while Real ruled the world. More recently, anyone from the title-winning
team of 1996 is hailed as a hero.

.. _who_is_the_cult_hero:

Who is the cult hero?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Long-term injury victim Kiko in the many the team misses more than any
other. The striker led the scoring charts when the club won the title in
'96 and until his ankles gave out this season he was still the fans'
favourite. Christian Vieri nearly won that honour, but when he quit the
club for Lazio his name became dirt.

.. _who_is_the_current_crowd_favourite:

Who is the current crowd favourite?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In a team of international stars it is the young Spanish striker Jose
Mari who gets the fans to their feet. His perfect balance, quick feet
and incisive dribbling have drawn comparisons to Michael Laudrup.
Roberto, who can play either on the right of midfield or up front, is
another rising star. Juninho will always be a favourite and is finally
returning to his pre-injury form.

.. _who_to_throw_your_tortilla_at:

Who to throw your Tortilla at?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With the players losing their Sacchi inhibitions the season is looking
much brighter. The Italian coach dropped Juninho and left the young
players out in favour of his countrymen. Temporary coach Carlos Sanchez
Aguiar brought back the Brazilian, dropped the ineffective central
defender Torrisi and told everyone to have a bit of fun. Now Antic has
got Atletico playing enterprising football again.

.. _the_stadium:

THE STADIUM
-----------

.. _describe_the_local_area:

Describe the local area
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The industrial south-west of the city doesn’t have many attractions and
the area around the Estadio Vicente Calderon is grim and colourless. The
stadium is tucked in between the Manzanares river and a series of
sweeping dual carriageways. Although the San Isidro cemetery is on one
side and the local Mahou brewery on the other, the Calderon does have a
faded charm of its own. The red-and-white striped façade needs a lick of
paint, but the bars below the stand are real working-class shrines to
the club. It may not have the glamour of the Bernabeu, but there is a
down-to-earth feeling and there’s even a bar inside the ground selling
Mahou beer, or course.

.. _how_do_you_get_to_the_stadium:

How do you get to the stadium?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s not far from the old centre of the city and the excellent metro
network takes you there in no time. Take Metro Line 5 to Piramides then
head right across the large Glorieta de las Piramides roundabout. You
won’t see the stadium until you are halfway down the hill, but when you
do it looks like a giant circus tent.

.. _what_is_the_view_like:

What is the view like?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Even with a capacity of 62,000 the all-seater Calderon feels quite
compact. The steep tiers offer good views but be warned: three sides are
uncovered. The covered side is called the preferente with the palco
preference B being the most expensive at around 9,000 ptas. A VIP box
with room for 25 seats has just been opened and there are plans for
further expansion. At the other end of the scale, behind the goals in
the anfiteatro de fonde norte or sur the views are still excellent and
you get closer to the ultra culture. Prices start at around 3,000 ptas.
The Atletico hardcore head to the fonde sur, so it’s worth going to the
fonde norte to take in the choreography at the other end.

.. _how_easy_is_it_to_get_a_ticket:

How easy is it to get a ticket?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unless Real or Barcelona are the visitors, there are no problems getting
a ticket even on match day. The main ticket offices are at gates 8 and
68 and there are always touts who can easily e knocked down in price
nearer kick-off. Remember, Liga games generally kick-off on a Sunday at
five in the evening, or seven in the spring and early summer.

.. _what_have_been_the_highlights:

What have been the highlights?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Few and far between with the last memorable back in 1996, after the Liga
title was secured. Around 200,000 fans converged on the Vicente Calderon
to celebrate. It was also used in the 1982 World Cup when France
strutted their stuff against Northern Ireland and Austria.

.. _the_fans:

THE FANS
--------

.. _how_do_atletico_fans_compare_with_their_rivals:

How do Atletico fans compare with their rivals?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Los colchoneros (the Mattress Makers) – so named after their red and
white shirts originally borrowed from Athletic Bilbao – have one of the
best-organized and colourful followings around. The main ultra group, El
Frente Atletico (the Atletico Heads), who stand in the fonde sur, are
the closest thing to Italian ultras in Spain. They sing and chant for
the full 90 minutes, wave the red, white and blue flags and bash out an
incessant drumbeat, backed by what seems to be native-American chanting.
There is even a racoon mascot dressed in a native-American headgear who
runs on before kick-off to gee everyone up.

.. _it_sounds_more_like_an_american_university_game:

It sounds more like an American university game?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Not quite. They also have repertoire of cheesy 70s pop songs. They may
like to sit and be entertained in the Bernabeu, but in the Calderon they
want to get involved.

.. _are_they_disliked_as_much_as_real_madrid_fans:

Are they disliked as much as Real Madrid fans?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Just about. Atletico have a strong travelling support which has made its
presence felt at away games. Like Real fans, they sing about Madrid’s
regional pride which doesn’t go down well in other parts of their
country.

.. _how_do_they_get_on_with_their_city_rivals:

How do they get on with their city rivals?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Atletico draw their support from the solid working-class districts in
the centre and south of the city. They are proud that the club wears the
city’s emblem on their shirts. As Real think a game against Barcelona is
more important, el Atleti will do anything to put one over them. Real’s
exit from the Champions’ League this season caused just as frenzied
celebrations as Atletico’s victory over Roma in the UEFA Cup. A derby
game is still the most important to win – even if it is only for vocal
and colourful support.

.. _do_you_rate_their_kit:

Do you rate their kit?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You’ll certainly stand out in the crowd wearing the famous red-and-white
shirts. The stripes on the sleeves have been replaced with faded-red
that darkens towards the cuffs. The blue shorts are stylish and baggy.
Of course, the mark of Gil is on the front of the shirt, but it’s still
a cool kit.

.. _what_kind_of_media_coverage_do_atletico_receive_and_how_are_they_perceived_by_the_media:

What kind of media coverage do Atletico receive and how are they perceived by the media?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It takes something like winning the Liga title or a Gil outburst for
Atletico to make the front pages of the Madrid-based newspapers Marca
and AS. You will have to dig back into around page 10 to find news on
the club and then it is never as interesting or as outlandish as Real’s
coverage.


=== Madrid - Estadio Metropolitano ===
by Chris Clements | Posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

How can I say this politely? Well, it's like this... Atlético Madrid
has played around a bit. There you go, I've said it. You see, between
its formation in 1903 and moving to their present home in October 1966,
Atléti changed venues on ten occasions. Sometimes they played in the
the east of Madrid, sometimes to the west, and occasionally they were
Real Madrid's tenants, but throughout this period, the club's one true
home was the Estadio Metropolitano.

(An early 20th century Sporting Metropolis - the Calle O'Donnell)

Founded on 26 April 1903 by a group of Basque students at the Colegio de
Ingenieros de Minas, Athletic Club de Madrid was an affiliated body of
their parent club, Athletic Club de Bilbao. This arrangement continued
until 1912, when it became a club in its own right. Early matches were
played to the east of Madrid at a very basic ground called the Campo
del Retiro. In 1913, the club moved to a location in central Madrid on
the Calle de O'Donnell. This enclosure is often confused with that of
Real Madrid's, who had opened their own ground a month earlier, which
was fifty metres to the north east. Athletic's first match at the Calle
O'Donnell was on 9 February 1913,  when the club lost to Athletic Club
de Bilbao 0-4 in front of a crowd of 10,000. Here the club remained until
May 1923, when it moved to the north west of Madrid and the Metropolitano.

(Nearing completion, the Estadio Metropolitano in early 1923)

The Estadio Metropolitano was built by the Urbanizadora Metropolitana, the
forerunners of today's Madrid Metro as part of a real estate development
close to the city's University. Architect José María Castell used
the site of a natural amphitheatre, and at a cost of 1.5 million
pesetas developed what would be largest and best stadium in the Spanish
capital. The southern side featured an open area of seating that was
accessed from the rear at street level. The eastern end behind the goal
had a semi-circular terrace, which was also accessed at its rear. The
northern side was made up of wooden bleachers, but was relatively slim
as the land fell away quite sharply to the north west. The west end was
left open, but further standing was provided on a cinder athletics track,
which ran around the club's first grass pitch. Officially, the stadium had
a capacity of 25,000, but accounts of the stadium's size vary greatly,
in part to the additional standing provided on the athletics track, but
also the large open grass banks the stood on either side and above the
east terrace. This meant that crowds of 45,000 were not uncommon, and
there are contemporary reports of as many as 75,000 attending fixtures.

(Pride of 1920's Madrid  - Estadio Metropolitano)

The stadium was inaugurated on 13 May 1923, when a crowd of 25,000
saw Athletic beat Real Sociedad by two goals to one. Whilst the home
supporters were happy with the result, they and the local press were
less than happy with the new stadium. Transport to the stadium was poor
and when you arrived, access into the arena was congested. The Spanish
Football Federation was also unhappy at the high cost of admission
into the stadium, and whilst Athletic's matches continued to attract
decent crowds, the stadium's other tenants, Racing Club de Madrid and
Gimnastica Española struggled to attract an audience. Athletic and
the Urbanizadora Metropolitana made a commitment to improve transport,
access and facilities and by 1925 the stadium had a capacity of 30,000
and improved services. Four years later on 15 May 1929, 45,000 paid to
watch the Spanish National Team inflict the first defeat on England by a
continental side. The 4-3 victory was masterminded by the Spanish national
coach, Fred Pentland, who happened to be English. Oh, the irony! Later
that year, Athletic could not agree new terms with the owners and in
September 1929 the club left the Metropolitano.

(Campo de Vallecas - Dodgy pitch even by 1930's standards)

Athletic started the 1929-30 season at Real Madrid's Charmatin stadium,
and also played some home fixtures back in their old stamping ground of
the Campo de Vallecas. They eventually returned to the Metropolitano in
January of 1930, but the upheaval clearly did not help, and Athletic
finished bottom of La Primera and was relegated. During the summer of
1930, the Urbanizadora Metropolitana carried out another upgrade to
the stadium, building a covers over the southern and northern sides of
the ground, but also converting the athletics track to allow greyhound
racing. This didn't curry any favours with the Spanish Federation, who
apparently outlawed the use of the stadium. So, Athletic returned to
the east of Madrid and the Campo de Vallecas. The pitch at Vallecas was
poor and over the next few seasons, the poor surface and disputes with
the owners of the Metropolitano, saw the club criss-cross the capital,
even playing matches back at Real Madrid's Chamartin. Athletic won
promotion back to La Primera at the end of the 1933-34 season and played
home matches during the 34-35 season at the Campo de Vallecas. The
following season saw the club return to the Metropolitano, but this
didn't inspire Athletic and a measly return of 15 points saw the club
finish eleventh. However, relegation to La Segunda was the last thing
on the club's mind when war broke out on the 17 July 1936.

(1939 & a decimated landscape with the Metropolitano at the centre)

The Civil War hit Athletic hard. Only six playing staff returned after
the hostilities and the club had debts of over 1 million pesetas. To add
to their woes, both the Campo de Vallecas and the Metropolitano had been
destroyed. Drastic times call for drastic measures and in October 1939
the club merged with the air-force backed Aviación Nacional, to form
Athletic-Aviación Club. Oviedo's inability to compete in the 39-40 La
Primera threw the club a lifeline, and the Federation arranged a play-off
between Athletic-Aviación and Osasuna for a place in that season's first
division. Athletic-Aviación won the tie 3-1 and started the 39-40 season
back at Real Madrid's Estadio Chamartin. Under the stewardship of the
great Ricardo Zamora, Athletic-Aviación were a revelation and as the
season progressed, both they and Sevilla battled for the league title. It
came down to the final set of matches, with Athletic-Aviación's 2-0 win
over Valencia at the renovated Campo de Vallecas earning them a first
ever league title. The club retained its league title in 40-41 and during
the summer, was forced to change to the Spanish version of their name,
becoming Atlético-Aviación. During this period, work was under way on
rebuilding the damaged Metropolitano. This included a new main stand, new
terracing at the east end and for the first time, a substantial terrace
on the north side of the ground. The Metropolitano was re-inaugurated
on 21 February 1943 with a 2-1 victory over Real Madrid. Atlético were
Madrid's top side throughout the 1940's and here's some footage of their
5-0 derby win from November 1947.

(Atlético dug deep and extended the stadium in 1954)

On the back of two further back to back title wins, Atlético finally
purchased the Metropolitano on 15 April 1950 and immediately set about
improving the facilities. The architect for the work was club president
and former player, Javier Barroso. The first phase saw the terracing
extended around to the west end and new changing facilities were built
beneath this terrace. Then in the summer of 1954, the club took the
audacious decision to excavate the pitch and add another ring of seating
where the greyhound/athletics track had stood. This increased the official
capacity to 58,000, but just when thoughts were turning to another period
of success, their rivals from across the city upped the ante, winning
nine of the next twelve league titles. Despite its recent refurbishment,
the Estadio Metropolitano was already out of date, dwarfed by the newer,
larger stadiums that Real Madrid and Barcelona had built. Thoughts were
already turning to building a new stadium, when Atlético finally won the
Copa in 1960 and made up for lost time with another success a year later.

(Nearing the end. The Metropolitano in the mid-1960's)

In 1961, Atlético purchased large plot of land in the south western
outskirts of Madrid, next to a gas works and on the banks of the Rio
Manzanares. Work was slow, and with the Metropolitano sold and the club
suffering financially, they moved in with Real Madrid for part of the
1964-65 season. They brokered an agreement to return to the Metropolitano
for one final season in 1965-66 and gave the stadium a glorious send-off
by winning La Primera. Here is some footage of the stadium in May 1965,
when Atlético beat Real Madrid 4-0 in the last 16 of the Copa. Atléti
played its last game at the old stadium on 8 May 1966, when they beat
Athletic Club 1-0 in the first leg of the quarter final of the Copa del
Generalisimo. The move south to their new stadium was  delayed until
week 4 of the 1966-67 season, which given the upheavals of the previous
43 years, was not unexpected.

=== Stadium Metropolitano de Madrid ===

==== Key facts ====

Club: Club Atlético de Madrid | Opening: 1923 | Closing: 1966 | Final
capacity: 58,000

==== Description ====

Stadium Metropolitano was for over 40 years the home of Club Atlético
de Madrid until the club moved in 1966 to Estadio Vicente Calderón.

In its first decade of existence Atlético had played at various makeshift
grounds until the club moved in 1913 to Campo de O'Donnell, not to be
confused with the stadium with the same name that Real Madrid occupied
at that time.

However, Atlético's ambitions soon outgrew Campo de O'Donnell and a
piece of land was bought in the north of the city near the Avenida de la
Reina Victoria. The plot was strategically chosen as it lay not far from
the newly opened metro station Cuatro Caminos on Madrid's first metro
line, though the club would also build an additional electric tramway
to connect the metro station with the stadium.

The site of the proposed stadium already had the natural shape of an
amphitheatre and therefore only one proper stand had to get built to
complement the earth banks which served as terraces.

Stadium Metropolitano officially opened on the 13th of May 1923 and an
estimated 20,000 people witnessed Atlético beating Real Sociedad 2-1.

The capacity of the stadium was initially about 25,000, though another
20,000 could witness the games for free from elevated places outside the
stadium. The architect had been José María Castell, who would go on
to design Real Madrid's Campo de Chamartín, which would open one year
later not far from the Stadium Metropolitano.

In 1929 the stadium was the site of the England national team's first
loss outside of the British Islands. Spain sent the English home with
a 4-3 defeat.

In the late 1930s the stadium got severely damaged during the Spanish
Civil War. For a few years Atlético was forced to play its home matches
at other grounds, but then made use of the opportunity to thoroughly
rebuilt the Metropolitano, which included the construction of proper
terraces at the ends where before were mere earth banks.

Stadium Metropolitano reopened on the 21st of February 1943 with a match
against Real Madrid (2-1). The renovated stadium counted with a capacity
of 35,800, which soon however turned out to be too small again. In the
early 1950s the pitch was therefore dug out and an additional lower tier
was added, which raised capacity to about 58,000 places.

However, by that time the stadium had already significantly aged and
more modern stadiums were built elsewhere in Spain, not the least Real's
Estadio Santiago Bernabeu. It therefore did not take long for Atlético to
start making plans too, and in the early 1960s a plot of land was bought
on the southern edge of the city on the banks of the Rio Manzaneras.

While Atlético's proposed new stadium was technically closer to Madrid's
city centre than the Metropolitano, the city had until then mostly grew
northwards and many Atlético fans protested against moving to the edge
of the city. The current protests of moving to Estadio La Peineta may
therefore for the older fans seem like a deja vu.

Estadio Vicente Calderón finally opened in October 1966 and the
abandoned Stadium Metropolitano got soon after demolished and replaced
by residential buildings.


=== NOBODY F**KS WITH THE JESÚS [Part 1] ===
Nicolas Obregon
Dec 29 2022
Written By Nicolas Obregon
The black and white newsreel depicts catastrophe. A crowd parts, unsure of
where to look as the two ashen-faced men carry out the dead body. It is
barefoot, covered in a sheet, maybe a tablecloth. Though this footage is
grainy and 50 years old, the bovine shock that hangs in the air is still
palpable. In the rubble-strewn foreground, we see a tumult of helpers and
mourners. In the distance, the exposed foundations of a tower block are
visible, standing next to the crane that had erected it—which has now
become a gallows. Like some cruel allegory, we are witnessing the dreams
of one man, suspended in time, and the brutal realities that followed.

My father's side of the family are ardent Atletico de Madrid
fans. Growing up, it felt like Jesus Gil y Gil was almost one of us,
a godfather, always present on the living room TV with a quotable
quip, his face hanging from every newspaper kiosk like a grinning
Baron Greenback. If you follow football, you've probably heard of
him. If you're into Spanish football, it's a given. While mayor of
Marbella, he infamously hosted a live TV show from a jacuzzi surrounded
by bikini-clad women (with a national screen-share of 40%). Fidel Castro
gifted him a crocodile which he named Fury and adorned with a gold
chain. (He would later threaten to feed his Atletico players to it). And
though he died in 2004, his funeral attended by 20,000, to this day,
on the streets of Marbella, you will hear him spoken about very much
in the present tense. "He's in Brazil, on a beach somewhere..."
For the average former second-hand car salesman, any of these exploits
would amount to indicia of a life well-lived. For Gil, they are but mere
anecdotes. He is one of those rare men: whatever you've heard is almost
certainly true. But it's the stuff you haven't heard about that will
make your eyes pop.

 Gil was enormous in all senses, as though a thousand different
 luxuries and pleasures had snowballed into one man, glued together with
 corruption, forming a single gargantuan open-shirted, gold-chain-wearing,
 totem to naked ambition. Introducing him is an exigent task. Not because
 he's a particularly complicated man to comprehend, at least on the
 surface, it's more that there's just so much of him—it's hard to
 know where to begin. I'll defer to the legendary Carlos Herrera who,
 in December 1995, on his eponymous talk show, described him thusly:
 "Tonight, we have a man that doesn't stop talking...
 even when underwater. The Vatican is thinking of
 naming him the patron saint of referees. What hasn't
 been said about him? Direct. Loudmouth. Effective. Without
 taboo. Brilliant. Unconscionable. He likes to stomp in puddles and he
 does this without any complex... He wins the favour of people as though
 he's playing Monopoly. He's triumphed in business, politics, and now,
 also football. He's mayor of the city with more Rolls Royce-owners
 than anywhere on earth except London and he's proprietor of a team
 that could challenge for the title this year. He is, Jesus Gil y Gil."

So emerged a mayor, a president, an owner—a man who would soon (if he
wasn't already) be looking libidinously towards the presidency of Spain
itself. Gil stood there, his behemothic blazer hanging off his torso,
as if someone had dressed a boulder in an expensive suit that morning,
and, with a serpentiform smile, bathed himself in the reclame he loved
so much.

Herrera's first enquiry touched on his interviewee's big break in
business, doing up and flogging second-hand cars but Gil, as he so often
did, viewed the question not as a blank to fill in, but as a trampoline
from which to launch into another charismatic anecdote. "The truth
is, I came to Madrid as a 17-year-old, thin as a skeleton. I moved into
a brothel, I didn't know it was a brothel, but the madam offered me
the room for free if I kept her books. I was innocent, I was tender, I
knew nothing. I was going to be a vet... But I left veterinary studies
because when I saw a horse chucking up blood, I fainted. So, I took up
economics instead."

We're left to ponder an improbable parallel universe wherein the tender
Dr. Jesus Gil spent his life spaying and neutering pets. Spain would have
been a very different place. Not just for Marbella and its skyline. Not
just for Atletico Madrid, or club football in its entirety. Nor for the
nation's politics as a whole. But for the 58 people who died on the 15th
of June, 1969. Luxury. Success. Defiance. Corruption. Fascism. Sex. Even
death itself. All these elements orbited around Gil, sucked in by
the gravitational pull of his charm, like so many planets in a solar
system of avarice. He was a remarkable man, despite his protestations,
a poster child for populism. Gil understood the value of masquerading
in mediocrity and wore the mask of joe schmo convincingly, despite the
axiomatic incongruity of being a wealthy property developer who owned
a private jet, a pet crocodile and stables (he was fond of kissing his
horses). "I'm not a saviour. I don't condescend," he said on
June 15th 1991, the day he became mayor of Marbella. "I'm just one
of you." But what was he beneath the mask, beneath all that bluster?

(Credit: Pablo de la Fuente | Unsplash)

On Jesus Gil's Wikipedia page, his life is split into three categories
Business, Politics, and Football (followed by death). While the lines
between these three estates often blur in Spain, they stand neatly
as the pillars in the life of Gil. "He understood that the mix of
real estate development, plus politics, plus football, would be an
explosive one," said Carlos Castresana, the public prosecutor that
would eventually put him in jail. But this realisation would come much
later. For all the eclat of Gil's later life, his story has far less
conspicuous beginnings.

 Gil was born on the 12th of March, 1933, in Burgo de Osma, a small,
 cobbled town quietly nestled around its 13th Century cathedral. Here he
 entered the world one week after the elections in Germany that would see
 Hitler effectively attain dictatorial powers, and three years before
 the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. But while he was born into a
 generation of upheaval, it was his mother, Guadalupe Gil Hernando,
 that would shape his destiny above all else. Born to labourers in a
 tiny village, she was known as La Guadalupe (The Guadalupe), a sturdy
 woman that lived to 91, dying two years before her son. In 1931, at the
 age of 19, she married one of the richest men in Burgo de Osma. Gerardo
 Gil Elvira had a business fixing potholes and laying roads by donkey. He
 was a widower, with three daughters, and 25 years her senior. Guadalupe
 would later tell Gil biographer and journalist Juan Luis Galiacho:
 "I admit I married for money. I never loved my husband. I would've
 married a dog or a cat."

Within two years she would bear her first child, naming him Gregorio
Jesus. Given that she happened to have the same surname as her husband
—women in Spain do not take their husband's name in marriage— custom
would presuppose, therefore, her firstborn would be christened Gregorio
Jesus Gil Gil. Yet Guadalupe would, perhaps rather portentously, eschew
convention and pointedly introduce a single letter —y (and)— between
her son's identical surnames, as though two blue-blooded families had
interlaced their illustriousness, a union of stately consequence. Her
son would not just be the mere offspring of a road-layer from a sleepy
cow-town. Nay, her son would be Gregorio Jesus Gil y Gil, someone
of two eminent blood lines, someone who would go on to achieve things,
someone who would matter. This single letter aspired, it reached for more,
and in cognominating her son thusly, it was almost as if Guadalupe had
predestined the boy to an entire lifetime of PR and puffery. Small-town
gossip can be cruel and the particulars of Guadalupe's biography are not
widely known but in this one detail, we can, perhaps, begin to envisage
the manner in which she came to be known as La Fanfarrona, The Braggart,
a nickname her eldest son would go on to inherit.

"His temperament, his insistence, his black marketeer mentality, that
all came from his mother," Galiacho told Vanity Fair. "Without her,
[Jesus Gil] would have been less than zero. She was the one that created
his persona of a businessman."

Three children later and seven years after marrying her husband, she would
have more than gossip to worry about. After a series of ill-informed
business decisions, Gerardo Gil died in 1938. The little he bequeathed
would be claimed by the three daughters from his first marriage, leaving
Guadalupe, a widow at just 27, almost nothing with which to raise her
three young children in the midst of a civil war. Jesus, then 5, would
later recall a life lesson his mother gave him (in those hard days, one
can imagine her whispering it just as much to herself): "Don't let
anyone step on you and have faith in yourself. Remember, you are a Gil."

With her husband's business now gone, La Guadalupe took out a loan of 25
pesetas and set up a tobacco kiosk in Burgo de Osma. It would soon become
her command centre for a burgeoning black-market business. From there, she
took over the town's supply deliveries—wheat, salt, firewood—later
seeing she could rent out the spare carts. Slowly, she grew her trade,
eventually recovering her husband's paving business. Franco's
fascistic Spain was in its infancy by now and new roads in good nick,
as they do, took on political significance. Nascent regimes are ripe for
clandestine kickbacks and it's in this time that Guadalupe began to
understand the bureaucratic ecosphere of local government. (I wonder,
was her son watching?) She married again in 1942, already completely
economically independent by then. "Just as with my previous husband,"
she told Galiacho. "I never managed to love him."

Fifty years later, on Carlos Herrera's chat show, Jesus Gil would
say of his mother: "I still have to call her three times a day
because she thinks I'm still a little boy. She prays a lot. Lately,
she prays now for Atleti. Same as my wife. But my mother, every day, she
goes to twenty masses. Minimum. All the money I give her, she spends in
church. But there's no talking to her. And when I lose? She tells me:
get rid of them!"

With a chuckle, Carlos Herrera would clarify: "You mean she says
you should get rid of the (Atletico de Madrid) manager, get rid of
the players?"

By then her son was riding high, having already won the mayorship of
Marbella by a landslide four years before and was on the cusp of the
crowning achievement of his career in football, winning the double with
Atletico de Madrid in the 95-96 season. "Get rid of them all,"
Gil replied, mimicking his mother with a sly grin. "They are tricking
you."

When he married in 1961, La Guadalupe did not attend her son's wedding
and they went several months without speaking. According to Juan Luis
Galiacho, this would be the only thing that would ever distance Gil
from his mother. For someone who took two husbands but loved neither,
perhaps it's no surprise that she didn't understand her son's
devotion to Maria de los Angeles Marin Cobo, a pretty green-eyed
bakery clerk. "Guadalupe wanted her son to marry upwards," Galiacho
told Vanity Fair. "In an effort to scupper the romance, she sent an
anonymous letter assuring her firstborn was lazy, dishonest, without two
coins to rub together. A cousin wrote the letter but Guadalupe dictated
the thing. Gil only had to read the first line to know who the real author
had been. She always despised her daughter-in-law. That relationship never
improved but eventually they became accustomed to living like that."
 Maria Cobo would go on to tolerate almost every one of her husband's
 antics, even when he would kiss his prized horse, Imperioso, during TV
 interviews. "Don't worry, woman. I love you more than the horse,"
 he would wink. Maria would roll her eyes. "There is no difference
 between me and that horse." More often than not, when asked for
 her opinion on her husband's latest scandal, she would reply: "My
 husband talks enough for the both of us."

stripes.jpg
Why exactly Guadalupe disliked Maria so decidedly isn't known. Clearly,
she held financial stability in matrimony above feeling. Maybe it was that
she couldn't accept her son had found something she hadn't. That he
had taken a different path. Or perhaps it was simply that Guadalupe never
forgot the hardships in her own past, the wounds of surviving those days
never healing. For all her son's success, she knew how sharply fate
turned—shark-fin quick.

We're left to wonder, then, if she foresaw how high her son's
star would climb (and fall) when he left Burgo de Osma as that tender
17-year-old, afraid of blood. Unlike his father, who had made his fortune
thanks to the humble donkey, Gil vomited when having to practice on
them. Did Guadalupe hold her head in her hands when he told her he
no longer wanted to be a vet? Did she march straight to mass when he
dropped out of economics too? Or maybe, given her moxie in bootleg
markets, she responded positively to her son's decision to get into
the world of business? Whatever her take, it probably won't come as
much of a surprise that Gil's first venture would entail cutting a
few corners. Renting garages in the neighbourhood of Legazpi, and later
Vallecas, today a hard-left-leaning working class area, (and home to
one of the finest little football clubs in Spain), he would buy old
vehicles, do them up, at least cosmetically, and flog them on. If the
gears would grind, he'd pour sawdust to silence the problem. To quote
Mickey O'Neil: you bought it like you saw it. In this way, Gil would
soon be able to purchase his first apartment. He would later tell the
story of making his first million and sleeping on a bed of his own money
that night, like some second-rate Spanish Scrooge McDuck.

Perhaps, born of a childhood of constant contretemps, he quickly developed
a taste for the finer things in life. Good food. Expensive suits. Gold
chains. Night clubs. Women. And how to woo them? At that time, it was said
that he was driving one of three American convertibles in Spain—his was
red (of course it was) and he called it The Meat Wagon (of course he did).

By 1953, at the age of 20, Gil's business had become a small empire. One
imagines his innocence and tenderness turned to dust, replaced by street
smarts inherited from his mother, sharpening his savvy with every deal
he closed. Jesus Gil was making a name for himself. That he was doing
well was beyond doubt. He could've stopped there. If wealth and success
had been the goal, he had achieved that in a few short years, making his
first million by 20, his metier straddling both cars and property. But
at some point, as the Spanish say, it starts to fit a little small on
him. It's as if he goes to bed Jerry Lundegaard, and wakes up Gordon
Gekko. What provoked this shift in weltanschauung is unclear. Perhaps
it was a tête-à-tête with his mother. Or perhaps it was the motorbike
accident he suffered in 1954 that disfigured his face and almost killed
him. (Guadalupe would travel down from the village to the sanatorium,
run by Carmelite nuns, and encourage the doctor there tending to Jesus
Gil to give him the best possible medical attention thusly: If my son
dies, I'll take this knife in my bag and cut you open.)

Whatever the cause of his epiphany, at some point Gil starts to think
a little bigger than girls, cocktails, and flogging dodgy motors. Amid
the hue and cry of a construction boom, he raised sufficient capital
to speculate on land, buying around Madrid and its periphery. "His
acquisition of Los Angeles de San Rafael was a visionary move,"
said Galiacho. It would be this move that would catapult him towards
the persona that would be soon become, towards his great victories in
politics and sport, and toward the tragedies that would inevitably follow.

sierra-4024812_1920.jpg
An hour's drive from Madrid, across mountains bestrewn with juniper
groves of ibex and Pyrenean Oak forests watched over by imperial eagles,
one reaches the plains of Old Castile. This land, characterised by
medieval hamlets and rocky, sweeping panoramas, is likely best-known
for Segovia, the beautiful provincial capital with its iconic Roman
aqueduct. But it is also home to another, altogether less visited
town. And it exists because of Jesus Gil y Gil. "I am, or at least I
see myself, as a creator," said Gil himself on television in 1968. "I
want to create a city for 20,000 inhabitants. The aim is to bring the
sea and the mountain together." Luckily, the mountains were already
in place, they didn't have to be imported (though one feels Gil would
have dreamt up some way). A ski station was built with chairlifts with
service to the nearest mountain, La Mujer Muerta, so called for its
shape which resembles a dead woman. The sea, however, was some 350km
away to the north. Farther in all other directions. Gil, of course, had
a plan. "We'll have an exclusive reservoir so residents can practice
nautical sport activities at our yacht club. It will be admired by all."

So it proved.

aqueduct-segovia-4197453_1920.jpg
"It was the city of his dreams," said Gil's son, Óscar Gil Marin
on the HBO series The Pioneer (2019). "He wanted to build a reservoir,
a dam, to create pharaonic projects... Imagine, he gets there and sees
only rural land that has absolutely nothing but cows, located almost two
or three hours from Madrid." On the Los Angeles de San Rafael website
today, the promotional video shows a woman in a bikini drenched in a
slow-motion torrent of water. There is a close-up of a red cocktail. Young
people in good shape splashing each other in a pool. Even a horse is
kissed. One imagines Jesus Gil would have approved. Feel. Live. New
experiences. The video drips dynamism, selling a place of exhilaration,
joie de vivre, the abandon of a summer holiday. Indeed, the town still
boasts golf courses. Paintballing. A pirate-themed restaurant and a
'multi-adventure centre' advertising jet skis, 4x4s, and banana
boats. The infrastructure for summer capers is all in place. There are
also some grandiose architectural touches, hinting at its bombastic
creator's character, dotted haphazardly through town. Two stone angels
holding swords guard the entrance. A vaguely Soviet bronze statue in
homage to womankind crowns a roundabout. Yet it is also a distinctly
ordinary place. On River Street, the Coming Soon posters outside the
cinema are blank. Next door, the patio of a bar is almost full, its
clientele, mostly of retirement age, enjoying libations on two converted
parking spaces covered by a canopy, the awning advertising drains and
gutters. Los Angeles de San Rafael is a pleasant gated community, smartly
middle-class in parts, hedges and stone walls along quiet avenues. Streets
are all named, almost as an afterthought, for far away locations—Naples
Street, Paraguay Street, France Avenue. It is home to some 12,000 people,
yet it feels sparse somehow. A little lonely. From almost any angle,
mountains and plains can be seen beyond. Wherever one stands, one might
view outside. It's hard to imagine that such a town could act as the
path along which a man might follow his destiny to greatness. Or that,
at the same time, it could be the greased slope descending to a ruinous
calamity. For Gil, it was both.

Despite this, if one looks for them, there are traces of him are
everywhere in Los Angeles de San Rafael. A small tile plaque on the foot
of another vaguely Soviet concrete sculpture reads: To Jesus Gil y Gil,
creator of this complex, where love meets the eternal. On the northern
fringes of the town sits the Ciudad Deportiva Wanda, a sports centre
where Atletico de Madrid establishes its summer training camp each
year. (Gil would, of course, go on to become club president and later
owner, while Wanda is the Chinese conglomerate that acquired naming
rights to Atletico's stadium in 2017). And on Venice Avenue, a bust
of Gil sits in the centre of a rustic stone roundabout, kept company in
the eternal by thriving lavender bushes, a slight smile molded into the
ample bronze face. The inscription behind it reads: To Don Jesus Gil
y Gil, for his excitement and passion, whose dream of a city is today
a reality. Personally, it strikes me as strange that such a man could
be held in reverence here, even if he did create the place—as though
he were some sort of fertile yet vengeful god that must not be angered,
else he taketh away.

 "He realised that Spaniards were starting to go on holiday,"
 said Gil's younger brother, Javier Alfonso Gil. "To own a second
 residence. So he dreamt up a living complex. We went to Caja Segovia
 and Banco Hispanoamericano (former banks) asking for loans. He would
 project for them a reality. Look, he'd say. This is a reality. But
 it was absolutely only a utopia."

The 'Partial Plan' for urbanization of the farmland known as El
Carrascal was approved on the 28th of September, 1967. "He was already
overseeing an enormous success," continued Javier Alfonso. "He was
selling lots of parcels and getting constant visits. Los Angeles was
starting to earn renown before the... problems that occurred. So, he
starts hiring all the best artists. The best acts in Spain came to Los
Angeles on the weekends and people visited." (Already, it seemed Gil
understood the power of entertainment, something he would exploit to
a massive extent, as though some crafty Caesar). "That was a golden
epoch. He already had two restaurants but he wanted a new one, a bigger
one—expand, expand, expand."

On the 15th of June, 1969, Gil agreed a deal with food multinational SPAR
to host a lunch and convention for some 300,000 pesetas (around £20,000
today). Given the high volume of SPAR employees (numbering in their
hundreds), the lunch required the use of both the original restaurant
and the new one, which was still under construction. Originally due to be
completed at the end of July, Gil accelerated the schedule to mid-June,
in time for his payday.

But by the morning of the convention, the cement had not yet set, and
the mortar was still soft. Construction had taken place right up until
the night before, the workers covering walls and partitions with tarps
to hide unfinished areas. As a result, at 2:30pm, lunch would begin in
a restaurant which had undergone no kind of official safety inspection
whatsoever. Gil was in attendance initially, along with the deputy mayor
of Segovia and the mayor of El Espinar. 150 people took their seats at
several long tables, in an area of some 320 square metres. At 2:45 pm,
everyone stood for the priest to bless the lunch. But there would be no
blessing. The floor collapsed and the deck beams fell away, crushing
a large number of people now below. "I remember June 15th well,"
said Julio Cesar Fernandez, a journalist and former colleague of Gil
(he had hired artists to perform in the town) and who was present in
the restaurant. "When I arrived, people were already there. Whole
families were there. It collapsed. When we fell down, until the first
heads of survivors became visible, completely white, the silence was
sepulchral. Silence. Not one cry. Nothing. Absolute silence... And then
the mess began."

(Credit: Mehmet Can Atik | Unsplash)

The dead lay in piles, the wounded crying for help. Later, there would be
reports of looting amid the Dantean carnage and screaming. It would be the
cook, Nemesio Santos Meco, that would first inform Gil of the collapse
who, at that moment, was in one of the urbanization offices. "I have
an image of my father surrounded by a mass of people," said his son,
Jesus Gil Marin. "He was trying to give instructions on how to
recover bodies." Having being pulled from the rubble, Julio Cesar
Fernandez recalls a less decisive figure. "When I was taken out of
there, I found myself face to face with Jesus. He asked me do you think
there are any dead? I recall my reply. Just go over there, have a look
for yourself. And I never saw him again."

It was the mayor of El Espinar, who had survived the collapse by virtue of
sitting on the VIP table which was supported by independent pillars, that
gave notice to Adolfo Suarez, the then Civil Governor of Segovia. Suarez
had only been in the role for a year and would go on to become the first
President of Spanish democracy after the death of Franco. But in 1969,
arriving at Los Angeles, he could scarcely believe his eyes. Exactly
what happened next is not known but some kind of fight or tussle broke
out between Suarez and Gil leading to the latter being locked in a room
under custody of the notorious Civil Guard. Perhaps due to the fight,
or perhaps for fear of Gil being lynched. Either way, the two would
never bury the hatchet.

In the following days, as the number of dead increased, Jesus Gil
(and several colleagues), appeared in court. Before the Magistrate,
Gil took responsibility for the compensation that would be due to the
victims and their families but refused to acknowledge his guilt. He
never would. During proceedings, it came to light that Gil had failed to
request the necessary certificate for the expansion of the restaurant from
the local hospitality union. Nor had he requested the necessary permit
from the Ministry of Tourism. Nor had he requested approval relating to
electricals from Segovia's Delegation of Industry (electricals which
had not, at any rate, even been installed). "He was not responsible
[for the collapse]," said his son, Óscar Gil Marin. "It just came
upon him. It's like a plane accident. I don't think, back then, my
father knew the construction risks." Despite this claim, during the
court case, a letter was given into evidence from his surveyor, Jose
Maria del Pozo Cubero, who wrote the following to Gil:

To take this seriously, you must hire an architect who analyses the
structure and then reviews the work that is being carried out, so that he
takes responsibility for it, [in order to avoid], when construction of
a party room or restaurant is carried out, that some misfortune could
happen. There is still time to repair this. You shouldn't handle
this project yourself. I can no longer act as your surveyor and, as
consequence, no longer run this project.

The letter would exonerate del Pozo. Gil, having ignored the warning,
(and others, such as from Segovia's School of Architecture) was not
spared. He was sentenced to five years in prison and obliged to pay a
fortune in compensation to the victims and their families. It was one
Francoism's biggest catastrophes. For a man who'd made his first
million at 20, Gil had risked it all for the sake of a few thousand
pesetas and now almost 60 people were dead. Why he'd roll the dice when
he was busy selling land and, presumably, earning far more significant
sums, is hard to understand. Maybe those big loans necessitated swift
repayment. Or perhaps cutting corners was simply baked into the cake. It
had worked for him so far. But cut enough corners and, sooner or later,
your house falls down. Los Angeles de San Rafael was less than two
years old on the day of the tragedy. Gil had achieved his dream and
built a town. It had been the admiration of all. For a short while,
at least. But that dream became a nightmare. As for that compulsion to
expand, expand, expand? It was now confined to a 3x4-metre cell.

(Credit: Deleece Cook | Unsplash)

Gil entered Segovia's jail in 1971. Decades later, he would recall
his time in the clink with the legendary Jesus Quintero—you may have
seen him losing his professional cool in the laughing man meme that went
around the world (the original, incidentally, is far funnier than any of
the spoofs that have been made). "What's jail good for?" Quintero
would ask.
 "Jail is good for nothing," Gil replied. "It's a warehouse of
 human beings where you only create more delinquents."
 Quintero stayed on the topic. "Were you a leader in jail?"
 Gil responded unflinchingly. "I've always been a leader."

As with Carlos Herrera some years earlier, these succinct questions were
met with sprawling, Cervantean answers. Gil didn't do ripostes, he
told stories. "I'll tell you, the first time I was in jail—I'll
tell you a grave matter—it was for nine months after the collapse
in Los Angeles de San Rafael. It wasn't my fault or anything but
okay. So, a lot of people died. I had to go buying off corpse after
corpse. It's very harsh to say it like that. At first, they [the
families of the victims] don't want to hear it. Afterwards, it becomes
how much? After that, it becomes no, that's not enough. So anyway,
in jail I was in with the lazy and the crooks. Those are the inmates I
was with. One guy had raped a little girl but the mother had consented
to it. Another guy was told by his wife that he had a better time with
the donkey and the pig than with her. So, look. Spain has these people
too, we shouldn't close our eyes." Quintero nodded indifferently at
yet another peregrination, then checked his notes, about to ask another
question. But Gil, as he so often did, launched into another anecdote
in order to keep his audience's attention. "We suffered terribly
with the cold in jail. You couldn't stop it with boots or coats or,
that cold would get into your bones and you would die. So, I had to make
an agreement with the priest. I said to him, there's 80 of us. If you
want us to go to mass, you let me run things on the inside. You bring us
firewood and a stove, and every one of us will congregate. And God forgive
us, we all went. Now look, I'm a Catholic. Maybe I don't practise
much but I'm the one who's made the most churches in Spain. I'm up
to nine churches. Go and ask the bishop in Malaga, you'll see. Because
I'm a believer and that. So, yeah, [in jail] we all went to congregate
like little lambs, the priest couldn't believe it. The first day,
he didn't have enough communion wafers. We had to split them four
ways." Quintero, shaking his head, had to suppress his laughter.

Gil had painted a picture of hardship in prison where he was forced
to survive on his wits, surrounded by zoophiles and pederasts, making
deals to warm the bones of inmates, all the while bringing them closer
to God. Better the sinner that repenteth and all that. But was it true?

"Life in prison wasn't hard for Gil. They set up an office for him,
he played cards with the guards," said Juan Luis Galiacho. As he wrote
in El Cierre Digital: "He turned his cell, with a typewriter and carpet
included, into an office serving as a branch of his business, a business
that he did not intend to abandon. Thus, from prison he continued to
hire workers and direct the running of the Los Angeles de San Rafael
complex." Jesus Gil Marin, his eldest son, also derogates the Count
of Monte Cristo story of bread and water, telling HBO: "At that time,
Candido was the best restaurant in Segovia and they brought meals to my
father in jail every single day." Inside, Gil became a foreman of sorts,
divvying up wine, tobacco, coffee, and quickly establishing himself as
a popular figure. These freedoms meant that Gil was able to organise
meetings with prisoners and officials. "At siesta time," wrote
Galiacho in El Cierre Digital. "When the other inmates were confined to
their cells, Gil gathered his guests in his 'dining room' and doled
out seafood and roasts. It was how he kept the prison under control."

But while Gil occupied himself in the slammer with the running of his
business and ensuring the body of Christ passed the lips of his fellow
inmates each week, his mother was on a very different mission. Though
Gil had only been sentenced to (an exceedingly lenient) five years for
reckless negligence, this punishment was unacceptable to La Guadalupe. Her
philosophy in life was don't let anyone step on you and she felt
that the state had very much stepped on her son. She would meet with
Pilar Franco, sister of the dictator. She would meet with a cardinal
and archbishop of Madrid. Several ministers. Her grovelling letters
were received at the highest echelons of Spanish power. As far as she
was concerned, to quote John Turturro's show-stealing cameo in The Big
Lebowski: "Nobody fucks with The Jesus." In February 1972, just under
two years before being spectacularly smoked by ETA, Franco's right-hand
man and president of the government, Luis Carrero Blanco pardoned Jesus
Gil y Gil. He had served only four months, less than a month for every
fourteen people that lost their lives in his restaurant. "She is the
one that saved him always," Juan Luis Galiacho told Vanity Fair.

But free or not, his name was in ruins. Not to mention, he owed millions
in victim compensation. What Jesus Gil needed now was a way to wash his
reputation clean. What he needed now was a way to make a lot of money
and fast. What he needed was a mug's game. What he needed was football.

(Credit: Alberto Frias | Unsplash)

Part Two of Nobody F**cks with the Jesus will be out soon.

Atletico MadridNicolas Obregon

=== NOBODY F**KS WITH THE JESÚS [Part 2] ===

Jan 17 2023
Written By Nicolas Obregon

Credit to Christian Pramberger

Fire up the time machine and set the dial to November 23rd,
1996. Specifically, the 32nd minute of the premier league encounter
between Southampton and Leeds United at The Dell. Picture the scene,
midfield virtuoso Matthew Le Tissier has just gone off injured. Enter Ali
Dia (real name Aly Dia), Senegalese international, former PSG player,
and cousin of George Weah, wearing the number 33 shirt. He's making
his debut today but nobody has heard of him—is he any good? Why,
former World Player of the Year (and future president of Liberia) George
Weah vouched for him personally, even telephoning Southampton manager
(and future Sky Sports pundit/casual xenophobe) Graeme Souness. He
must be half decent. By the 85th minute, Dia's debut was cut short,
ignominiously being subbed off, and the Southampton faithful had their
answer. Though he had been on the pitch for only 53 minutes, two things
were clear by that point. 1) if Ali Dia did share DNA with George Weah,
he certainly shared none of his talent. Le Tissier would later describe
the debut as: Fucking hopeless. Embarrassing, like Bambi on ice. And 2)
while Weah may have been a marvellous player, if he had vouched for Dia,
a future career as a scout looked improbable.

It transpired, of course, that Weah had never heard of Ali Dia and that
it had, in fact, been a classmate of Dia's that had phoned Souness. On
that winter afternoon, Southampton fans had been left bemused, wondering,
how could this have happened? Souness had played for Sampdoria, managed
in Turkey. 'Ulubatli' had contacts. Continental savvy. How could he
have been mugged off like this by a simple phone call? Reader, had they
access to our time machine, they would have been all the more puzzled,
given the Scot's self-avouched knowledge of foreign cultures, that
his great perspicacity, sadly, did not extend to the African.

While there is a harmless pleasure in this story, it's simple enough
to understand. A classic con job. A Senegalese Mrs. Doubtfire with
brass balls and a funny way of running. But what if the con had been
an inside job? I'll explain. Now, most football fans have heard of
the Dia debacle, it's all but legend. Yet I'll warrant most won't
have heard of the other Senegalese to have signed for a leading European
football club in the 90s without anyone knowing if he could actually play
football. Limamou Mbengue did just that, joining Atletico de Madrid on
January 16th, 1998. Just as those Southampton supporters two years prior,
fans of Los Colchoneros (meaning mattress-makers, for the leftover fabric
from which the wives of the factory workers made the club's first kits)
were left scratching their heads: who the hell is this guy? Reader, with
our time machine, we will come back to Mbengue in the third and final part
of NOBODY F**KS WITH THE JESÚS but for now let's stay in 1998. For
there was hardly time to process the news. After all, he wasn't the
only incoming transfer. Atleti had also signed a Nigerian, Abass Muyiwa
Lawal. Along with Bernado Matias Djana, from Angola. And not forgetting,
of course, Maximiliano de Oliveira Teixeira, a Brazilian, and the cousin
of Denilson's chauffeur's mum's neighbour's adopted son. (OK,
that last bit isn't true). Football hipsters did not yet exist, but
if they did, not even the biggest tash-twirling Swiss Raiffeisen Super
League-viewing hipster would have heard of these guys. Nobody had heard
of them. They were essentially real-life Football Manager regens. From
where did Atleti sign them? Why, from Promociones Futbolisticas, of
course. And no, that's not a third-division team in Bolivia, it was a
private company that Jesus Gil had set up. What does that mean? Well,
it means he owned the players privately. As in, they belonged to him. And
he had just sold them to the football club of which he happened to be
president. Jesus Gil passed four objects from his left hand to his
right hand and charged money for doing so. Some €15 million, in fact,
an astronomical figure at the time. The only catch? They weren't actual
footballers. In the case of Mbengue, he was a refugee living in Spain
having claimed asylum. In effect, the president of Atletico de Madrid
had gone and done an Ali Dia on his own club. And if you thought that
was bad form from a club president, well, amigos, as The Bobbettes so
wonderfully sang, You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet.

Credit to Bold5

In Part 1 of NOBODY F**KS WITH THE JESUS, I delved into the humble
beginnings of Jesus Gil y Gil—from childhood poverty, to failed
veterinary student, to wheeler dealer in second-hand cars, before rising
to power as a property magnate—until falling from grace as a convicted
criminal.

Last time we left off with Gil freshly released from jail after going
down for a few months having been found guilty of mass manslaughter
(his substandard construction of a restaurant had resulted in the deaths
of 58 people in 1969). For many, that would have been the end of their
story, the shame enough to cause them to quietly slink into obscurity,
not wanting to bother the pages of the history books ever again. But
not Gil. For one thing, he wasn't made that way. He was simply too
recalcitrantly flamboyant for that. For another, while he had been
released from his jail sentence early, Gil was still legally obliged
to pay millions in compensation. And he only had the one way of doing
that. Selling parcels of land in the town that he built, Los Angeles
de San Rafael.

Just one problem. It was the very scene of the tragedy that had landed
him in jail in the first place. Buying a plot of land on which to build
your dream home in a Gil's utopia circa 1971 would have been about as
appealing as an off-cuts match day beef burger in the middle of the vCJD
outbreak. Perhaps, in these dark days, Gil recalled an old solution to
an old problem. When the gears of the second-hand motor he was trying to
flog were grinding, he knew how to add oil to silence them. Now that oil
would be reinvention. Gil understood that it wasn't just Los Angeles
that required metamorphosis. He did too. And so, with little other
option, he pulled up his (considerable) trousers and got stuck into
a PR-rebranding. And how to start fixing the cosmetics of his tragic
town? As an old man in a bar in Madrid once told me: Listen, Spaniards
love three things above all. Football and tits. It was a philosophy Gil
took as gospel. Like his spiritual scion Donald Trump would some years
later, he would host Ms. Universe contests on his property. Miss Spain
pageants. And just as he had done before the tragedy, he would hold
music concerts, the latest pop craze (within the bounds of Franco's
strict censorship laws, of course) drawing crowds from far and wide to
little old Los Angeles de San Rafael. Even the great Rinus Michels would
bring his Barcelona side to stay in Gil's properties, locals agog at
the sight of the legendary pair of Johans, Cruyff and Neeskens. If Gil
understood nothing else, he had always grasped that entertainment can
breed legitimacy. And in Spain, there is, of course, no greater and more
profoundly beloved entertainment than football.

When he discovered that Vicente Calderon, revered Atletico de Madrid
president (the stadium was renamed in his honour), was bringing the
team to nearby Segovia for pre-season training, Gil went on a charm
offensive. We're left to wonder what kind of stops he pulled out to
do this but one thing is certain, they would become firm friends. (To
this day, Atleti still undertakes pre-season physical training in Los
Angeles de San Rafael).

Gil knew football was Spain's opiate of choice. If he could somehow
finagle his way into Atletico de Madrid, not only would it be good
PR, it would be good money. Here was a man with debts. Here was a
man that craved power. And suddenly, here was a man with an idea:
what if football wasn't just a bit of grass with a bunch of blokes
running around on it? What if you could dig beneath it? And what if you
would find there was pay dirt. But befriending the president of one of
Spain's most successful football clubs was one thing. Replacing him
was another. Particularly if you knew nothing about football. Then again,
that hadn't stopped Gil selling cars. Or selling land. Or selling pipe
dreams to banks telling them all the while it was reality in exchange for
huge loans. Still, it begs the question: how in the eff did he manage it?

Credit to Jorono

"My father didn't understand anything about football," Miguel
Angel Gil Marin would tell HBO. "In fact, I think he died without
understanding football." That may be true, but what Gil did understand
was how to charm people. As his youngest son, Óscar Gil Marin, would
say: "Football was the platform he chose on which to reinvent himself
and make himself known." Gil himself, wearing a purple silk scarf, a
gold pocket watch, and flanked by ebony statues of cranes and naked women,
explained his ingratiation process very simply during an interview. "I
started speaking with Don Vicente Calderon, anyway, after that, I joined
the board and I was only there four months. That's how long I lasted
because I didn't like it, the traditional system back then was...
different. The majority were on the board for personal profit and gain
from the club. That's why clubs have such huge debts." As such, Gil,
remarkably, has the bright idea (and the bollocks) to present himself as
the anti-corruption candidate. He stood against the excesses and rackets
present in football. "This is exactly the same thing he would do later
when running for Mayor in Marbella," says Gil biographer and journalist
Juan Luis Galiacho. "It's always the same with him you see, he's
very repetitive in all of his little ways. But Calderon believes in
him. He thinks that Gil is the only one capable of saving Atletico de
Madrid from the dramatic financial situation it was in. That's when
the elections for the club presidency are announced."

It was 1987, and a handful of solid candidates presented themselves
for the presidency of Atletico de Madrid. Among them, Enrique Sanchez
de Leon, a solid and clear-sighted candidate, a man that had been in
cabinet as Minister of Health and Welfare. "Gil? It's a difficult
mystery to explain," he told HBO's The Pioneer (2019). "How does a
delinquent become a charismatic leader of a collective? I was a serious
and boring candidate. People knew me through politics. And I tabled [for
the club] a realistic panorama. But the attractive candidate was Gil. His
personality overflowed. He created compelling fictions. He was someone
that every single day would aliment the press, he created controversy."
Galiacho would underscore the important role the press played in Gil's
victory. "He gains the support of the media, particularly (renowned
sports journalist) Jose Maria Garcia, they all support him. Jose
Maria Garcia was a god back then, there wasn't a single Spaniard
that didn't listen to him. Me included." As for poor old boring
Enrique Sanchez de Leon? Well, Jose Maria Garcia himself explained
it. "Look, he was a good bloke. Intelligent. Well-prepared. In those
things, he had the advantage. But he was boring. Flavourless. Now, he
respected the law exquisitely. The thing is, football back then? It was a
world without laws. And the momentum was with Gil." (It didn't hurt,
of course, that Garcia had Gil on the radio all day long). Sanchez de
Leon went from being the clear favourite, a noble, elegant steed out
in front of the peloton, to feeling the sour breath on his croup of a
donkey catching a second wind. What's more, Gil had a plan. Once again,
he would bet on artifice over art. He was selling another dodgy motor,
this time to all of Spain. He needed a big sodding dollop of oil to quiet
the grinding gears. He needed a cosmetic WMD. And he had just the man for
the job. It was a tactic that Florentino Perez would copy years later
at Real Madrid when nicking Figo from their eternal rivals. "Atletico
needs a game-changer," Gil would say. "And you can count on one hand
how many of those there are in the world today. Van Basten at Milan, and
so and so over there, and so and so over there (y tal y tal, meaning so
and so, was Gil's catchphrase, and it would later become the title of
his TV show—more on that anon). Who's the true star right now? It's
Futre, who is 21."

Paulo Futre (right)

Handsome, talented, and lightning fast, the young olive-eyed winger
had just won the 1986-87 European Cup, putting in a man of the match
performance in the final against Bayern Munich. He'd already won two
league titles. The world was at his feet. So, how to convince Paulo Futre
to sign for Atleti? Just as he had sweet-talked banks into granting him
vast loans to build his as yet non-existent utopia, and just as he had
convinced Vicente Calderon into moving his pre-season to said utopia
before charming his way into inheriting the presidency, Gil went on a
PR offensive. He donned his aviators, took a private jet, and flew out
to Milan. Gil recounted the story to national Portuguese broadcaster,
RTP. "We went to a private hotel in Milan because we had bought the
rights to Futre, and now we had to actually talk with him! So, I saw the
Porto players in the lobby of the hotel. I looked down at their shoes and
I noticed, on one of them, the name Futre was written. I said, so this one
is Futre." To this day, the Portuguese recalls the meeting. "He was
a big, strong man with gold chains. I'll never forget that moment. The
meeting was incredible. Everything we asked for, he accepted. I would say,
I want X, and he would say OK. Then he would add, what about a house? And
I said, hm, a house? OK. And he said, no problem, with a pool. Car? He
was asking me! So, I replied. Uh, Porsche? And him, OK, Porsche."

Futre became more than a star signing to Gil. He would become club captain
for much of his time at Atleti and, as many have noted, including Gil's
own children, Futre was more like a son to Gil. "My dad's dream
was to present Futre in Jacara nightclub and to do these elections his
way." With Futre in tow, now driving a dealership-new Porsche, Gil
won the presidency by a landslide. The mayor of Los Angeles was now
a football president. "I was saddened to see how easily the masses
were won over," said Enrique Sanchez de Leon. "Good, innocent
people, lapping up demagogic, unrealistic ideas. Well, that's populism,
no? All that matters here is Futre and beating Real Madrid." In a packed
stadium, the players would take to the field, Futre now among them wearing
the number 10 shirt, to bathe in the applause of the overjoyed fans. And
Gil, as ever, would have something to say about it. "We're going
after every trophy! Atletico de Madrid has changed, it has somebody to
defend it now," Gil then told perhaps the greatest of all his lies,
wrapped up in a distorted truth. "Also, from now on, you can be sure
that we won't do crazy things. Every peseta paid out, won't be paid,
unless signed off by me."

And in the beginning, those pesetas rushed out of Atleti like a great
dam giving way. Gil hadn't just signed Futre. In the first week, he
also brought in Marcos (father of Chelsea's Marcos Alonso), Eusebio
Bejarano, and even World Cup-winning manager Cesar Luis Menotti. In one
of those wonderful quirks of fate, he also signed the menacing and vaguely
simian-looking Andoni Goikoetxea, The Butcher of Bilbao, who infamously
framed the boots he wore on the day he broke Maradona's ankle. Menotti,
Barcelona manager at the time, was left incensed, and it would cement
a rivalry with Bilbao manager and polar opposite Javier Clemente for
years to come. For Jesus Gil, signings players would rarely be much of
an issue. Across 17 years as club president, he would bring in 166 of
them, almost a whopping 10 per season. He wasn't shy about hiring and
firing managers either. By the end of his presidency, his total stood at
39. Some seasons were crazier than others. 1993, for example, saw him go
through no less than five. In the end, it works out to over two managers
a season—not exactly ideal when you've promised we won't do crazy
things. "His great failing as a president," said Paulo Futre. "Was
his lack of patience. Defeat just wouldn't enter into his head. If you
lost twice and drew once, that was it, curtains. You're fired. And he
would sack the manger. It was terrible. It was terrible in the dressing
room." The ever-eloquent Menotti, following his inevitable sacking by
Gil in March of 1988, would describe the man as "just a brute copy of
Capone." His successor didn't have much more luck. And by January
of 1989, Marca's headline would read: THAT'S 3. Ron Atkinson would
tell the same newspaper: I don't know anything officially, but I bet
he's given me the boot. February 1990 rolled around and the headline
in El Mundo Deportivo read thusly: GIL AXES CLEMENTE. "For me," Gil
famously said on the topic. "Sacking a coach is like having a beer,
I could sack 20 in a year. Or 100, if needs be."

Credit to Pedro Nieves

But it wasn't just his stance on managerial appointments that was being
noticed. It wouldn't take long for Gil's financial abnormalities to
catch up with him. As early as May 1989, national newspaper ABC went with
the headline: GIL'S FINANCIAL IMBROGLIOS ARE REVEALED AT ATLÉTICO. But
revealed or not, it wouldn't be enough to put the breakers on Gil's
outside-of-the box thinking when it came to financial imbroglios. During
the 1990-91 season, Gil unveiled his latest masterstroke: Atleti's
new club sponsor would be the city of Marbella itself. A town of which,
in the summer of 1991, he himself would become mayor. And that single
word, MARBELLA, would infamously run across the chests of the players
for the next few seasons. "It seemed almost like an act of charity,
no?" said councillor Isabel Garcia Marcos (more on her later). "But
it stood out. It made you think: Gil has done this for free? He doesn't
do anything for free." Just as Gil had used music and Miss Universe
to flog his real estate up in the mountains, now he was using Atleti to
do the same for Marbella.

At any rate, up until now, Gil had talked a good game. He'd
brought in players. And he'd kept his promises to the fans (or so
it seemed). Except for the one about going for all the trophies. 1991
would be the year that changed. On top of becoming mayor of Marbella,
his team finally brought home some silverware. The Copa del Rey final
was a dogged affair. Alfredo Santaelena scored four goals during his
Atleti career but one of them will live forever. In the 111th minute, he
notched the only goal of the game. Tears welling in his eyes, Gil would
recline in his seat and cover his mouth with the emotion. "Another
dream come true for him," says Paulo Futre. "Everything was possible
with this man." Futre himself handed Gil the cup, as if repaying the
paternal faith he had reposed in the Portuguese, a son coming home with
straight A's. Gil, standing in the director's box, lifted the massive
trophy almost one-handed and smiled for the crowd that he had delivered
for. "Gil quickly now sees it," says Galiacho. "Now he's not
the marginalised one anymore, he's not stigmatised by the tragedy of
Los Angeles de San Rafael that had plagued him for so long. No, he's
the new god."

Credit to Silviya Nenova

It seems somewhat more normal today; a businessman not just suddenly
donning the hat of a politician, but running for public office and,
despite having no relevant qualifications or experience whatsoever,
somehow, emerging victorious. Up until 1991, that had never been
seen before in Spain. But what made Gil think he was cut out for
politics? (Other than being a black belt in Machiavellian dealings, of
course). He himself, answered that question many times. But his answers,
as they so often were, would always be tailored to the audience. Helping
his fellow man, trying to right wrongs, believing in the general spirit of
human advancement, pick a card, really. But it's hard to ignore the word
'opportunity' when it comes to Gil's every move. Or, perhaps it was
simply that the sweet taste of victory in 1987 with Atleti had given him
an appetite for elections. That warm rush of acceptance, the people have
spoken and they have chosen me. It's easy to imagine Gil wanting more
of that. And it's a given that he wanted more money. But he must have
known that, after enjoying a landslide in Madrid, he would be playing
on an altogether more complex pitch against trickier opposition. And in
politics, it would take more than a Portuguese winger with green eyes to
win over voters. Yet the methods he had applied to his earlier successes
were still bankable for Gil. That great victory meant that, whereas he
had always understood the value in PR and selling an idea, now he grasped
the true power of appealing to populism. If you gave the people what they
wanted, however unconventional or base, they would love you for it. And
so, it was a philosophy that he would export to his political candidacy
for the mayorship of Marbella just four years after Futre. But his
opponent this time around could not have been more different to Enrique
Sanchez de Leon: a young, attractive blonde socialist, Isabel Garcia
Marcos wasn't afraid of saying what she thought to Gil's face (he,
in turn, would call her a whore to hers during council meetings). Many
years later, talking to HBO, she would acknowledge the man's star
power. "Many would have liked to have been like him. He was a bit of an
idol to many. We can't deny the truth. When he was well into his term,
suspicions that he was a thief would arise. But the people would say:
I don't care, they're all the same. At least this guy actually does
things for us. It's terrible. But people thought that it was true."
Those trademark bombastic shows of flamboyant wealth and unapologetic
appeals to lowbrow populism did not go away. Gil merely transferred
them southwards along with his new far-right political platform: Grupo
Independiente Liberal. Or just, GIL. (And yes, really).

Marbella Town Hall

In the end, Gil won the race for the Town Hall by a landslide. One of his
first acts as mayor was to, repugnantly, install a bust of Franco in the
town hall—as if to signify a new way of governance, one that required
only the decisions of a single man. He was in the habit of strolling
through Marbella insulting any homeless people or sex workers (despite
secretly paying them off for their exile). His police force, some of
which was made up by elite military legionnaires recruited from postings
in Northern Africa, were told to be tough on crime. "When I came to
Marbella, it was like the Wild West," Gil told veteran interviewer,
Jesus Quintero. "But I have the best police force in Spain. They're
sensational because they fight. Just to fuck with people, I've bought
them Harley Davidsons. Tourists take photos. Look, it's no point of
pride, but according to the prosecutor, these delinquents today say, with
this son of a whore Gil, you can't even GO to Marbella anymore."
As stated, Gil was tough on crime. Depending on what sort of crime
one meant by 'crime.' Not so much on British or Russian gangsters,
however. Marbella infamously became a haven for them. Not to mention,
heavy hitters in the world of evil subhumanity such as Otto Remer and
Leon Degrelle, who would happily swerve extradition and elude any
kind of justice for their war crimes as Nazis. And yet, all the while,
Gil would push for crackdowns on back alley drug users, sex workers,
and foreigners. Civil liberties? Those got in the way of improving the
quality of life in his town. Unsurprisingly, by the time of Gil's
death, corruption was so deep-rooted in the Marbella council that it had
to be dissolved. Though it was a move common in Italy when dealing with
Mafia-infiltrated municipalities, it had never been done in the history
of Spain. Another first in Gilismo. And, who could forget, the TV show
he hosted on Telecinco, live from a jacuzzi surrounded by young women in
swimwear, The Nights of So and So. (Imagine the lovechild of Babestation
and TFI Fridays if produced by Paul Nuttall). In short, there was nothing
quite like it on TV. Jose Maria Garcia, who unsurprisingly became
Gil's lifelong friend, recalled on HBO: "One day [after seeing him
on TV] I said to him: Jesus, you beast. What are you doing with five
birds in a hot tub? And he said to me: friend, I am selling Marbella."
It was, essentially, a live variety show with Gil at its heart. There
might be some kids breakdancing, or you might see Benny Hill getting
slapped in the face by Gil, but that was the fluff. The main feature was
the Q&A where people around Marbella could ask the great man questions
directly. One elderly gentleman asked: what would you do if you found
out your son was a faggot? Gil replied with a characteristic mix of the
reprehensible and the reasonable: "Man, I think it's a bit weird,
personally. I mean being with a bloke in bed and, uh, looking at him
and all that? No. I think it's a bit weird. But when it comes down
to it, in the end, I think above all you have to respect it. If my son
were a faggot. Or my daughter a lesbian. Or a prostitute. I would help
them always. And respect them always. And always be their friend."
(This sentiment clashed somewhat with his own football transfer policy:
once I was going to sign an important player and then I found out he
was a faggot and I thought, no, that one can't go in my team changing
room). Whether it was the pearls of wisdom, the slapstick, or just
the tits, Las Noches de Tal y Tal pulled in a national screen-share of
40%. Of course, it would later transpire that Marbella city functionaries
would be waiting near the jacuzzi, off-camera, for Gil to sign official
documents. How could such an absurd situation arise? Perhaps because
this man had grown accustomed to people carrying out his every word,
no matter how ridiculous or egregious. Another one of his many talents:
making the unreasonable sound eminently reasonable.

By now, Gil was known throughout all of Spain. People were talking about
Gil. One imagines he hadn't conceived of the idea of a live TV show with
wisdom and wabs just for the lark of it. What he wanted was exposure. That
would lead to expansion. And it worked. His political vehicle, Grupo GIL,
not only allowed him to talk about himself in the third person, it was
getting stronger. Spreading throughout the coast, he sent his acolytes
and children (sound familiar?) in his stead to represent his brand of
his bawdy 'common sense' xenophobia — going back to basics with
pyrotechnics and open bars. And he wasn't just limiting himself to
mainland Spain. Gil would later blame his downfall on State persecution
triggered by this expansion. For he had set his seedy sights on Ceuta
and Melilla, Spanish territories in Northern Africa, planning to turn
them into a Mediterranean 'Hong Kong' with floating casinos and
effective control of shipping and tourism routes towards the Caribbean
and beyond. This was not only stepping on toes of national security. It
felt like a first move towards a higher office, above football, and
above Marbella. What if Gil was, whisper it, thinking of running for the
presidency of Spain itself? We'll never know how he would have fared
in a such a complex political kaleidoscope as the general elections in
Spain. Though he was two for two back then, it was never to be. (And,
frankly, thank f**k for that).

But back to his interview with Jesus Quintero. When asked the question,
but who votes for you, Gil was uncharacteristically pithy. "Everyone
votes for me. Because they want well-being. They want their livelihoods
looked after." He wasn't wrong. Grupo GIL was re-elected three
times. Reader, you must have realised by now that Gil cut corners and
thumbed his nose at regulation every step of the way. Quelle surprise
then, eh, to learn that he didn't stop once he had been elected
to public office. As sure as mercury runs into mercury, corruption
runs into success. And that corruption still stands today, the white,
denticulate punctuation of his apartments against the Marbella skyline,
like some ageing movie star's unnaturally shiny teeth.

But why Marbella in the first place? The truth was, Gil hadn't just
appeared overnight. It wasn't civics that had attracted him, it was
making money. He'd been present in the city long before 1991, forever
trying to erect his luxury structures, like a frenzied spider. In the
mid-1980s, in the thick of a slipshod real estate boom wherein banks
would supply more financing than was strictly necessary, time and again,
Gil found himself falling foul of city planning regulation. On the 14th of
August 1987, the headline in the newspaper Diario Sur would read: MARBELLA
COUNCIL SEEKS THE PARALYSIS OF JESÚS GIL CONSTRUCTION WORKS. Despite
lacking the permits, he would continue building, defying first the mayor
who ordered him to desist, and then a judge. Six weeks later, the headline
in the abovesaid newspaper ran thusly: JESÚS GIL DENIED NEW BUILDING
PERMIT IN MARBELLA. "This structure is the beginning of the Gil era
here," said Alejandro Dogan, vice president of the Residents Association
of Marbella on Antenna 3 in 2019. He was gesturing towards a large, white
luxury apartment complex—with its tiers and glass atrium and porthole
windows, it looks more like a cruise ship. "Gil began the construction
of this building but he was not given the permits by the city authority
and they halted it. Okay, he thought, if the local council has stopped
my construction, how can I obtain the permits? Very simple, I'll become
mayor, and that way I'll give myself the permit. Of course, after that
he began to realise what a gold mine this town was. That is to say, if
you were willing to bend the rules a bit, your feet only had to touch the
ground here and you would find money under the very stones. And that's
exactly what he did." Whenever Gil came up against a regulation that
inconvenienced him, like the eighth of so many Henries, he would ask:
but why does it have to be that way? "First off, he realises that
these rejections are relative," said his opponent in the 1991 mayoral
elections, Isabel Garcia Marcos. "Then he realises that by bribing
certain public officials, what 'cannot be done' suddenly transforms
into what can be done. When problems arose, he thought: how do I make
this go away? Well, I pay. He's given the permits and those buildings
are still standing there today." As Gil's deputy mayor, Antonio
Sampietro, pointed out. "Nobody stopped it [Gil's building projects],
no-one said that permit is incorrect. Why? Because everyone, everyone,
everyone had a lot to keep quiet about." When asked about these bribes
in an interview, Gil dismissed the notion. Sitting before two (presumably)
Ming dynasty vases in his home, wearing a khaki safari shirt open almost
to the abdomen, and his neck and wrist resplendent in gold which glared
in the hazy grain of the 80s soft focus camera, he reasoned: "There
isn't a developer out there that has built a square meter without paying
5-15% commission. This is a common practice, everyone knows this. Listen,
this was not a bribe, this was an extortion. Of me! They extorted me!"

Garcia Marcos unpacks that notion. "And so, he begins to caress the
idea: why pay someone else when I could just become mayor and then build
as much as I want? And that's how he arrives in politics in Marbella."
Part of Gil's nefarious genius was understanding that the public
didn't require a squeaky-clean image. Honesty, even when admitting
malfeasance, was a breath of fresh air to them. It was even loveable.

During a campaign rally, Gil would tell his crowd the following:
"I'll make you all rich. And I'll clean the shit off the streets
of Marbella." It was a simple platform. It always was with Gil. He was
going to make Marbella great again. Just as with Trump, and Berlusconi,
in a complicated, precarious world of grey outcomes, Gil shrugged, as
though society were overcomplicating things, and promised people solutions
in black and white. "Why are people excited about Gil?" he asked the
crowd in the third person he was becoming so accustomed to. "Because
there's a state of anxiety here. The worst thing that can happen to
a city is already happening: indifference. I will change that in one
year. For me it's as simple as A, B, C. I don't see any problems."

Ultimately, Gil's central election promise was change itself. And on
that, at least, he delivered. In his 11 years in government, Marbella
went from 49,000 households, to a staggering 127,000. Who knows if
there are numbers for the money generated by his back-of-the-envelope
property gold rush during that decade. When all was said and done, Gil
left no more tangible political legacy than the brick and mortar that
one can still reach out and touch today on the streets of Marbella. And
it stands to reason that this had been Gil's main political objective
all along—at least to begin with. He wasn't too bashful to admit
this truth either to Jesus Quintero. Gil laid his beliefs bare:

Q: Why did you get into politics? What do you know about politics?

G: Me? Nothing. I don't want to know anything. Why did I get into
politics? I've said it a thousand times. I was president of Atletico de
Madrid, I had my fame, people knew me, and I get into politics because I
had millions for sale, everything was bankrupt, Marbella was 'Mr. For
Sale', and nobody was there, no investors, no promoters, not even
God Himself. Everyone left. So, I was heading for total ruin. I made
myself mayor, uh, I mean I won the elections, to defend my patrimony. I
mean the patrimonies of others, not mine. There was a minister once,
the poor woman, I won't say her name, she was saying: be careful with
Gil, if you make him mayor, he'll only go and put up his apartment
blocks. And I thought, she must be a dickhead. Because yeah, I'll put
up my apartments, but his apartments, and your apartments too. It's
not like anybody's selling any of them anyway. Before me, one flat was
selling every six months, nobody could even pay the interest. We've
gone from there, to me selling flats that a worth a million pesetas per
metre. Is it really so bad to create wealth? And then people say, no but
he's building in a green zone. Yeah right, I'll build a house on the
branch of a tree. These people can go take it up the arse, for God's
sake. They always say the same, that I'm illegal, that I've violated
this, I've violated that. I'm always violating everything. People
have no solidarity. People have no gratitude. Never do anything thinking
people will appreciate it. This is the human condition.

Q: Do you not believe in your fellow man?

G: No.

Q: People say that Gil is involved with the mafia. That you protect them.

G: I don't know anything about the mafia but let me tell you a
barbarity. Maybe the mafia has to exist. Because justice doesn't
exist. The justice we have is a joke. I've heard that said. It's
just a sentiment I have.

Q: Have you paid off journalists?

G: No. The media calls me up. On the day they stop calling me, maybe
I'm lost. But I have a capacity to respond with the truth.

Q: Have you bought judges?

G: No, you can't buy a judge. (It would later transpire that a certain
judge in Marbella, Pilar Ramirez, had re-assigned every single case
against Gil to herself, only to then shelve it. Up until the intervention
of the corruption unit in Madrid, not a single case against Gil had
succeeded. Pilar Ramirez was promptly disbarred).

Q: Do you believe in the justice of men?

G: No. Men by their nature are unjust. We're not perfect.

Q: Do you believe in politics?

G: I hate politics.

Credit to Alberto Rudolphi

With his stunts and larger than life persona, Gil had indeed, as he told
his friend, been busy selling Marbella. And it would ultimately be that
selling of Marbella, by jumbling together the football club over which he
presided and the city that he oversaw, that would land him in jail. But
that was still a few years away. For now, Gil had other problems to deal
with. Because just a year after landing the mayorship of Marbella, things
were already starting to go wrong back in the capital city. Atletico
de Madrid's very existence hung in the balance. And if he lost this
fight, it would mean that Atleti had disappeared on his watch, just as
those 58 lives had in his collapsed restaurant. As Paulo Futre would
say: "The only thing Gil was afraid of? It wasn't politicians. It
wasn't judicial intervention or jail. It wasn't even the president
of the government. It was the Estadio Vicente Calderon full. Because
it would make his hands sweat."

=== NOBODY F**KS WITH THE JESÚS [Part 3] ===
The Left-Sided Problem
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Jan 18 2023
Written By Nicolas Obregon
The Atletico faithful

On the 30th of June, 1992, Jesus Gil had three hours left to pay several
billion pesetas. If he failed to come up with the money, Atletico de
Madrid would lose its professional status and be thrown out of top-flight
football. (The team was sitting in 3rd at the time). "Jesus Gil and
Enrique Cerezo became the heroes that would save the team," said the
man that would eventually put Gil in jail, prosecutor Carlos Castresana
on HBO's The Pioneer (2019). "Or at least that's the story that was
sold to the supporters," his lips tighten into a wry smile. Renowned
sports journalist, Jose Maria Garcia, who supported Gil's candidacy
in 1987 and who we met in Part 2 of NOBODY F**KS WITH THE JESÚS, adds:
"He saved Atletico de Madrid. And that salvation is what gave him
ownership of Atleti. I'd have to reveal a lot of secrets but what he
did is a feat of engineering."

Around that same time, PSOE, the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers
Party, tabled the idea of turning football clubs into sociedades
anonimas—essentially, Public Limited Companies. By then, Gil had
already become president of Atletico and, reader, it will not surprise
you to learn that he was greatly in favour of the move. "[Before that],
who owned the club? The members," said Enrique Sanchez de Leon, one
of Gil's rivals in the 1987 elections for the presidency of Atletico de
Madrid. "And so, what is a PLC? It is the reduction of ownership to just
a mere few. That feeling of ownership, belonging, participation? It's
gone. This is now an entity. It's now a business. And a business
belonging to someone else." Gil, speaking on television about
the matter, rejected those concerns as hearts and flowers, obsolete
sentimentality. "[The old model] is not viable, whatever the romantics
say. For me, club members—future shareholders—they simply don't
care how the club is administered, or if the players get paid or not."
If that standpoint discommoded the Atleti faithful, Gil reminded them
why they ought to be grateful. "I'm the only club president in Spain
that has brought in football stars, paid for with my own money, and that
has signed a guarantee with the National Sports Council that any losses
will be borne at my own expense. Something that no other president has
done in history."

coins-836091_1920.jpg
And it was true that Gil brought in players. For himself, to then loan
to the club. "I saw the players every month come into my father's
office," said Miguel Angel Gil Marin in 2019, son of Gil and majority
shareholder (somehow) of the club to this day. "They were coming for
their wages." By this point, despite his assurances in 1987 that he
would defend Atleti and put a halt to its crazy excesses of the past,
the club now owed Gil a lot of money. It had only taken five years. Like a
loan shark that had started out enquiring as to the health of your family,
and now, somehow, you find you're into him for 50-large. "For every
peseta that he spends on supposedly sanitising the club," explained
Castresana. "He has, in reality, accounted for as a peseta that's
owed to him." On the 13th of July, 1991, El Mundo newspaper, one of
the widely-circulated in Spain, ran the following headline:

JESÚS GIL ADMITS THAT HE AND THE REST OF THE CLUBS FALSIFY THE ACTUAL
SALARIES OF FOOTBALLERS.

Spanish law stipulated that there were a number of conditions
that a sociedad anonima had to meet in order to be considered
economically viable. For this reason, a certain amount of capital
was required upfront to cover any liabilities. Those clubs that
were incapable of "sanitising" themselves economically, faced
impending ruination—dissolution as a professional football club and
demotion to Segunda B, the third tier in Spanish football. "In 1992,
the year that these transformations are taking place," explains
Castresana. "Atletico de Madrid owes Gil around two billion pesetas
(€12 million) and he has other creditors that are owed another two
billion. As such, four billion pesetas are owed." Four billion pesetas
would be some €24 million—a staggering amount of money, particularly
in 1992.

Credit to Chefchen

A decade later, in May 2002, as Gil gave evidence in the National
Court, Castresana himself would rest his head in his hand, unblinking,
and half-slumped in his seat, as if wearied by this enormous man's
endless endurance for excuses and fish stories. "I wanted the club to
survive," Gil protested. "Because with 4 billion pesetas of debt we
were headed... Well, you know exactly where we were headed, to Segunda
B—as you yourself, Mr. Prosecutor, have said so many times, it would
be the disappearance of the club."

Now, reader, as I'm almost certain that you will be aware that
Atletico de Madrid did not disappear. You already know Gil 'saved'
the club. So, how did he manage to scrabble together four billion
pesetas? The back of every sofa in the world still would have left him
short. "My father was advised by a lawyer," explained a grinning
Miguel Angel Gil Marin on The Pioneer. "And they created an atypical
model, as was so often his way, which was to disavow the debt and say: I
do not acknowledge this debt the club owes me because if I do, and there
will be no-one that can save Atletico de Madrid. And what he acquires,
in exchange for those two billion pesetas, is the future capital gains
in the event of the sale of players by the club, once it was a PLC. This
was the strategy so my father wouldn't lose any of the money he paid
in between 1987 and 1992."

Atypical, indeed. If it sounds dodgy, that's because it was. The
State's prosecutor certainly saw it that way. A bemused Carlos
Castresana analysed said atypical model thusly. "Expected future capital
gains from the rise in value of players?" he shrugs his shoulders
incredulously. "You, sir, are selling me smoke. Because players can
become more valuable, but they can also devalue. Future perspectives
can't be objects of commerce to be bought and sold because nobody has a
crystal ball with which to see the future. But all the same, they cancel
the debt. [And he declares] the club doesn't owe me anything anymore."
Back to Gil sitting in the National Court in 2002, referring to himself in
the third person, and addressing a visibly frustrated Castresana. "And
I'll tell you what's more. The board, the last thing they probably
wanted to know was how my debt was cancelled. But here's the thing,
the board isn't stupid. If Atletico de Madrid doesn't have two bob
to rub together, and Gil, who is owed 1.9 billion, from one day to the
next, suddenly says he isn't owed a thing, has the Holy Spirit visited
us? Or has someone come along and given me the tip jar? The truth is
one that everybody knew perfectly well." At the time of his atypical
model in the early 90s, Gil had made a wager with the Spanish State:
you know what I've done. I know what I've done. But all the same,
you can't afford to kill me off. And, as he often was, he was on the
money. "The politicians back then decided that they shouldn't shoulder
the political cost of allowing one of football's historic clubs to
disappear," Castresana smiles between gritted teeth. "Because what
happens afterwards? Well, there are elections. And so, the National Sports
Council accepted it, and said, ah, so you, sirs, are saying that this debt
has disappeared from the books? Okay, fine. Then you only have to pay the
two billion [outstanding]." That was the price to avoid dissolution. The
price of survival. Now Gil just had to find the money. Somehow.

Club mascot, Indi

On the 27th of June, 1992, Atletico faced their blood rivals, Real
Madrid, in the final of the Copa del Rey, and in their own back yard to
boot. The headline in El Mundo leading up to game read: GIL MORE WORRIED
ABOUT FINDING 2 BILLION THAN THE FINAL.
 Come the day itself, 70,000 spectators filled the Bernabeu to witness
 Atleti beat their 'eternal rivals' 0-2. With little more than five
 minutes gone, former Madridista, the bowl-haired Bernd Schuster, scored
 a torpedo of a free kick from a mile out. To cap it, Gil talisman and
 now club captain, Paulo Futre, collected a perfect counter-attack
 ball on 29 minutes from Manolo to smash it into the top corner at
 Buyo's near post. "It was a very, very special day," Futre told
 HBO. "For everything that had happened, and for the Atleti faithful,
 we're talking about winning the cup at the Bernabeu. What I felt
 there?... If ecstasy exists, I felt it then. Because I've never felt
 what I did in that moment since, and I never will again," he inhales
 shakily and then smiles. "It was incredible. It was incredible."
 Gil embraced and kissed every single one of his players on the cheeks
 as they passed him on the VIP box towards the cup. The joy in his face
 gave no hint of the fear that had to have been churning in his guts. The
 tears of joy were barely dry on the surface of the trophy but for all
 the elation of the moment, disaster, as it so often was with Gil, was
 just around the corner. And just like his slipshod job in Los Angeles
 de San Rafael had collapsed on 58 people in 1969, it seemed as if the
 third biggest club in Spain, was also about to collapse and die too.

Three days passed. It was deadline day. 30th of June, 1992, 9pm. Gil had
three hours left to pay two billion pesetas. Atletico de Madrid stood on
the precipice of an abyss. There were only two outcomes. Either Gil found
the money however humanly possible. Or Atletico would simply die. During
a TV interview on the day, he was asked where things stood with the
club's situation. Gil, as was his trademark, made the question about
himself without giving a great deal away in terms of actual detail. "I
feel a certain optimism," he puffed out his great chest swaddled in a
flamboyant white silk shirt punctuated with little birds. "At 9:05am,
things were bad. At 9:30am, things were better. At 10am, back to bad. It
has been a day of great intensity full of lovely gestures. Even a homeless
man, who was given 5,000 pesetas, brought them to me." The TV anchor
cut in. "But Mr. Jesus, let's get to the point. In this moment,
is there anyone willing to put two billion on the table, yes or no?"

There was no answer.

But the Atleti faithful weren't going to go down without a
fight. Everybody chipped in. Once all the donations were totted up and
every lovely gesture was taken into account, what was put on the table
from the Colchoneros was 112 million. It was an incredible amount from a
largely poor and working class fanbase. "Thousands of members bought
shares," said Castresana. "Some buy for themselves, others buy for
their kids, the families of supporters buy shares, so on. But those shares
represented around three percent of what was needed. So, who puts down
the remaining 1.9 billion? Jesus Gil and Enrique Cerezo. And they did
that for that day and that day alone. The 30th of June. How? Gil shows
1.3 billion [to the sports council] that isn't his—that money belonged
to Dorna (Dorna Sports S.L.) who have lent it to him. And Enrique Cerezo
shows 600 million loaned by Credit Lyonnais. And that same day, the
30th of June, and not the next day, they take the money back out. These
two gentlemen, as such, appropriated 97% of Atletico de Madrid without
paying for it. They've acquired shares without paying for them."

So, how did it work? Reader, suspend your disbelief, but the way in which
these two men 'saved' the football club was via another atypical
model. Gil, using Banco de Vitoria, receives a loan from Dorna for 1.3
billion pesetas. He opens an account in which to receive this money, one
that has nothing to do with the football club itself, but a personal one,
of which he is the sole authorised holder. And he has the bollocks to
call this account 'Atletico de Madrid PLC in Transformation'. Into
this account, he transfers the 1.3 billion. It is here, in this account,
that the National Sports Council views the necessary money. A snapshot
is taken, if you will. Enrique Cerezo does the same thing at his end and
another snapshot is taken. Thus, the Council accepts their money as kosher
and, therefore, the club is correctly transformed into a PLC, all done on
the up and up. "That same day," Castresana says. "In the very next
minute after the money touches the 'Atletico in Transformation'
account, it goes straight back to Dorna's account. The money never
really left the Banco de Vitoria. And it never reached Atletico de
Madrid. Enrique Cerezo did exactly the same with Credit Lyonnais."

Enrique Cerezo, current Atletico president

Two perfect triangles. Two men dressed as firefighters, rush into a
burning bank, extinguish the fire, and when they walk out triumphantly,
all the money in the vault belongs to them. The perfect heist. Cerezo,
today president of the club (somehow), defended himself thusly, although
in almost Dr. Seussian fashion. "Listen up. The money was real money,
because it was money. The bank gave it as money, and the notary saw it
as money, the Council accepted it as money. If five days later, Jesus
took that money in payment for what he was owed, then mate, I don't
think that has anything to do with a PLC being formed correctly or
incorrectly." Gil's son, Miguel Angel Gil Marin, was frank in his
opinion. "That the money was there is undeniable. It's another matter
if the money was taken back a few days later. And I'm clear about it,
the money was taken back in repayment for what had been paid out between
'87 and '92. And for me that was wrong. He [my father] should have
respected the agreement and waited for the capital gains if they occurred,
which wasn't guaranteed, that was his mistake. He wasn't a thief. But
I am certain that he said to himself in that moment: I paid this money,
it's now sitting here in an account, it's available, why the fuck
wouldn't I take it back if I put it there in the first place?" Jose
Maria Garcia described Gil in 2019 in the following way. "He was
a bloke that would never give up. He would never throw in the towel,
even if all he had was faith. He was a poker player that went around
with two 7s. Only a bloke like him, grazing illiteracy itself, but cum
laude in mental agility, could have achieved what he achieved."

So, what are we left with in this counterfeit come-to-Jesus moment? The
answer is 3% of the club, untainted by financial quackery or atypical
models, that the fans actually paid for with real money. And even the
money from that 3%, the very next day, the 1st of July 1992, Gil removed
from the club account and placed into one of his shell companies. That
is to say, not only did Gil and Cerezo not pay 1.9 billion pesetas to
save the club, but they also plundered the 112 million pesetas the fans
stumped up who actually tried to.

Credit to Iñaki del Olmo

While I have focused more in this series on Gil's time as club
president/owner of Atletico de Madrid than his 11 years as a mayor, you
can be certain that he played these same games with the municipal funds
of the Marbella city council. To grossly oversimplify, he took public
money and disseminated it across a series of shell companies through
which he took care of city business. To this day, the Marbella council
is trying to recoup money from Gil's inheritors. And the suggestions of
relocation of money from the public to the private is not, unsurprisingly,
exclusive to his dealings on the south coast. Even Atleti's old stadium
itself, the very platform on which Gil had reinvented and enriched
himself, has been dragged into this soap opera of suspicion and financial
puzzlement. Could Vicente Calderon, the man after which the stadium was
named, have imagined that the son of the impresario he had earmarked as
his successor would one day demolish the altar of their common god? "The
demolition of the stadium means a significant financial kick for the Gil
family," said journalist and biographer, Juan Luis Galiacho, to Antenna
3. "They say that, in theory, it will be re-invested into La Peineta
(the site of the new Atletico de Madrid stadium) but we'll have
to see. What's evident is that here [at Estadio Vicente Calderon]
houses will be built and that represents a huge capital gain for the
heirs to Gil's wealth." Seeing as the new Atleti stadium, the Wanda
Metropolitano, bears the name of a Chinese conglomerate in its very name,
it's reasonable to conclude that the Gil family had some outside help
with that re-investment part. It's hard to picture a future where
apartments are bought and sold on the site of the old Calderon stadium,
without a single euro crossing the palms of the Gil family.

business-1477601_1920.jpg
And yet, for all this, it's easy to forget now, when the lows are
so viscerally evident, how heady and intoxicating the highs were. How
easy it was to let yourself go in the glory, the seductive thrill of,
as Paulo Futre said, a man with whom anything was possible. There was
no strategy but for all the chaos and teetering over the precipice of
catastrophe, it was also undeniably exciting. Your average Colchonero
didn't know what would happen next. Who would sign on? Who would get
the chop? Who Gil would sack next? His running of the club was shambolic
in the conventional sense. The team hardly ever could rely on stability,
always aware of some looming legal existential threat. Not to mention,
they couldn't take their wages for granted, either. "There were
times," Futre reflected. "When we didn't see a salary for eight
months out of the year." But it's also true that the team would
never be allowed to languish in a rut, if a philosophy was not working,
it would be changed. Gil knew nothing about football but he knew that if
Mr. X wasn't delivering results, then there was always Mr. Y waiting
in the wings. If one rolled the dice enough times, eventually one would
come up with a pair of sixes.

Radomir Antić

In 1995, Radomir Antić arrived as Atletico de Madrid manager. "We
changed something very important at the club," he would later
say. "And that is learning to get along with each other. From there,
we started to build a winning team, a team with good vibes." Miguel
Angel Gil Marin characterised Antić's arrival as "a breath of
fresh air—we got off to a good start, we were winning, we were playing
gorgeous football, and Radomir generated enthusiasm." One Kiko goal that
season would famously have Gil up on his feet dancing. Like a snowball
gathering pace, then becoming an avalanche, Atleti's optimism turned
into belief. And that belief became conviction. "His obsession was
the league," Futre recalls. "La Liga, La Liga, La Liga. If he put
down enough money, he didn't see why it couldn't happen."

He was right. After eight years with Gil at the helm, Atletico finally
did it. And how.

Atleti's trophy room

They won the league conceding only 32 goals (Valencia came second and
conceded 51) a full 17 points clear of Real Madrid who were left without
so much as a UEFA Cup qualifying place. As if that weren't enough, they
beat Barcelona (for the third time that year), despite Hagi and Figo et
al, in the final of the Cup. Milinko Pantić, the ingenious Yugoslavian
midfielder, scored the only goal of the game. It was Atleti's first
league and cup double in their history. Gil would break down in tears
after the match. "I don't care if I die now." It was a perfect
moment for the team. And for the man that had done so much to conquer
it. "I can't love anything more than I love all of you!" he
would shout down at the amassed fans celebrating below near Neptuno,
the Madrid fountain which is home to Atleti's triumphs. (Real Madrid
celebrate at Cibeles, just up the road). That night, Gil would go back
to referring to his own mortality in a live interview with Telemadrid:
"If I kicked the bucket right now, at least someone would be able to
say: well, there was a Quixote, who thought he knew something. The poor
man, he didn't know anything, but hey, look, he won the double."

Neptuno — where all Atleti major triumphs are celebrated

But like all who scale peaks, eventually one must come down to
earth. And the invocation of Quixote was, perhaps, either unfortunate or
prescient—the end of his story, of course, being sickness, renouncing
chivalry and fictions, then death. Then again, ecstasy is to be enjoyed in
the moment, not built to withstand the long-term. Nobody that day would
have noticed the dark clouds gathering overhead. Even if they had been
visible, nobody was interested in looking up. Who among those jubilant
Atleti fans gave a thought that day to the uncomfortable fact that since
Gil had arrived, they could no longer vote him in or out? (Dictatorships,
after all, so often begin in democracies). That their club was no longer
a club, it was a PLC? Who among them were thinking about the enviable
youth system that Gil had scraped? And while Raul Gonzalez had scored
an impressive 19 league goals despite only being 18 that year, who there
that day gave him a second thought? Having captained Atleti's under-15s
to glory, Gil earmarked him for great things back in 1991. "These are
my lads," he would tell TV variety show Tan Contentos. "This team
are the champions of Spain; they won the league scoring 264 goals in 22
matches—" he points to a small boy in the squad. "And look over
there, Raul Gonzalez, my captain. He scored 55 goals! Remember his
name, he will be a phenomenon." Gil wasn't wrong. Only he didn't
become one for Atleti but for bitter rivals, Real Madrid. Despite being
fiercely antimadridista as a boy, Raul was forced to swallow his pride
and don the famous white of the club where he would become a legend. The
thing that would surely rankle with Gil later on, above all, was that
he'd signed with them for nothing. Zero. And finally, who among those
deliriously happy fans, had wondered if this was as good as it would get?

I ask those questions with the benefit of hindsight, of course. And those
were all worries for another day. On that balcony, above a singing surf of
happiness and pride, Gil was holding two trophies in his hands. Surely,
this was the moment when the plan would all come together and Atleti
would usher in a great age of football dominance. With this squad and
this manager, surely conquest was his for the taking? Radomir Antić
didn't see it that way. "Gil's ambitions," he smiles. "Exceeded
reality."

The man had succeeded in football. In politics. He was a winner. And
he had the track record to show for it. But he was also over 60 years
old. And he made a lot of enemies. That's the price of success. And
that's the price of thumbing your nose at the world. Gil's luck was
about to change. Could he have imagined then, that while he had just
brought his football club to the zenith of its success, he would also
bring it to its lowest point within just a few years? And could he have
had any conception that he would be going back to jail?

The old Carabanchel jail—where Gil would be sent

All those years of monetary monkey business had, unsurprisingly,
resulted in a fair few legal banana skins. "A mayor cannot take out 450
million pesetas (from public funds) for sponsorships," said Gil's
political opponent, Isabel Garcia Marcos. "Unless it's consigned
by the municipal accounts, having been properly debated and approved
by the comptroller. There came a time when we legally denounced [filed
a lawsuit against] him for embezzlement of public funds." Carlos
Castresana himself, the prosecutor leading the corruption taskforce,
recalls a letter that arrived in his office one day. "That's how it
all began. The letter was anonymous, postmarked Marbella. Opening it,
I found it was photocopies of the municipal accounts from Marbella. So,
we started asking them for documents." It would, eventually, lead to
police raids in 1998.

Gil would wonder why it had taken the authorities so much time, given
his teams (and others) had carried the name Marbella for a good few
seasons now. It was his belief that it was a politically motivated
State aggression given his political inroads across not just Spain
but North Africa now, too. "I've always thought [football shirt
sponsorship] was the best way of promoting cities," he would say on
the night of the police raid, again using the third person. "There
is a principal objective in this: to disqualify Gil [from office]."
The man seemingly failed to understand that, once you are in politics,
everything is politically motivated. As ever, he played the victim
card. It was Gil's go-to move, even when he had thrown the first punch.

 A year later, he would tell the press outside his office: "Look,
 they can put me in jail if they want, they can call me 'mafioso',
 'narco trafficker', they can call me everything. But I think
 they've gone to hit me directly in the centre of my heart. That I
 can tell you. Because for me, Atletico de Madrid is my symbol, my
 life. It's not a business. It's not a business."

The Supreme Court in Madrid

He was right. In a way. Because it wasn't a business. By now, it was
a crime syndicate. El Mundo revealed in 1998 that Atletico de Madrid
had defrauded close to 500 million pesetas (around €4.5m in today's
money). It was as simple as declaring one official salary for a player,
and then paying them far in excess of that. Santi Denia (today Spain's
u19 manager) would officially earn 46 million pesetas, yet, in actuality,
was paid 130 million. Goalkeeper Jose Francisco Molina declared 72
million but took home 150. Kiko (my childhood idol) officially earned
154 but was, in reality, paid 250. And star players Juninho Paulista and
Cristian Vieri declared 154 and 160 respectively but both actually enjoyed
a 300 million peseta pay packet. Midfield maestro Juan Carlos Valeron,
who Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Roy Maakay would describe as the best
player they ever played with, would shun the report. "This article
doesn't even merit any comment. For me, this newspaper has fallen very
low and it doesn't deserve my comment." Kiko would simply call it
a lie. But then again, what were they going to say given Castresana et
al were breathing down their necks?

Twenty years later, Paolo Futre, laughed. "You've got Contract A,
and Contract B. Put yourself in the shoes of the players. They came in
[the authorities] and said hands off, nobody touch anything, give us
the contracts. All the clubs did something like that. But of course,
how are you going to play that? You'd go to jail. These players could
have gone to jail." Miguel Angel Gil Marin, Atletico de Madrid CEO
and son of Jesus Gil explained it thusly. "He [my father] would say,
how can we have all these players and pay them all this money and the
club survive? Well, by paying less taxes. So, we'll make one type
of contract. And then we'll make another type." Carlos Castresana
spelled out what that meant for the club. "That's why, in the club's
accounts, a new type of debt had been growing towards Gil himself and
Atleti now owed him money."

Credit to Mufid Majnun

And if things were looking bad for the club president, they weren't
much better on the pitch. The 1999-2000 season was Atleti's nadir. The
quality in the squad was not the issue. It contained the likes of
Ruben Baraja, Santiago Solari, Celso Ayala, Juan Carlos Valeron,
Kiko, Jose Chamot, Jose Mari, Vladimir Jugovic, Juninho Paulista,
and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink. Yet by the season's end, half of that
contingent would have left and Atletico would be sitting second from
bottom, a full seven points beneath Numancia in 17th. At the other end
of the universe, the exciting Super Depor team were winning their
first league title. (Spare a thought for Deportivo de La Coruña today,
not only are they playing in the third division, but this past December
they lost at home to fiercest rivals, Celta Vigo—not their main team,
but their youth team). While Atleti had beaten Real Oviedo 5-0 the first
time around, the season-defining match would come against them in the
return on the 8th of May, 2000. Oviedo were managed by the ever-sagacious
Luis Aragones and the match would be a tight affair with Chino Losada
and Paulo Bento putting the home team in a solid lead. But Atleti were
fighting for their lives. A young Joan Capdevila would pull one back
(and go on to lift the 2008 Euros with the opposing team's manager
eight years later). The best Colchonero player that season, Jimmy Floyd
Hasselbaink, had notched a whopping 35 goals, and would drag the game
level with 13 minutes to go, scoring a trademark ballistic header after
Kiko floated in a sumptuous cross-box ball. And with five minutes left
on the clock, Hasselbaink skipped away from two Oviedo players only to be
hauled down in the box by Sergio Boris. The Dutchman rolled up his socks,
an uneasy yet determined expression on his face. Salvation beckoned. A
point would do it. He stood over the ball, hands on hips, as though a
gunslinger waiting for his opponent to draw. The referee that day, Jose
Luis Prados Garcia, held up the penalty to remind Oviedo goalkeeper,
Esteban, to stay on his line. The back and forth would cost the Asturian
goalkeeper a yellow card but it would also create a delay. A delay in
which, perhaps, doubt could set in. Prados blew his whistle, Hasselbaink
struck the ball well enough, but Esteban elegantly palmed it away. By
the first replay the commentator was already prognosticating: "It
seems as if Atleti are already condemned to be in Second Division next
year..." And it was true. They were, unthinkably, relegated—along
with top-flight mainstays Real Betis and Sevilla. After the match,
Esteban would speak almost apologetically: "I don't want to go into
the history books as a player that relegated them." It was as if,
somehow, the goalie had looked into Atleti's future, witnessed the
darkness to come, and was already washing his hands of it.The calamity
almost felt cosmically-ordained. It didn't matter how good the squad
was. It didn't matter that Hasselbaink scored 35 goals. Claudio Ranieri
couldn't stop the rot across 26 matches. The beloved Radomir Antić
(his third stint) couldn't save them in 11. Let alone Fernando Zambrano
in the final game.

The next season, Betis and Sevilla immediately returned to La Liga. Atleti
would finish level on points with Tenerife in third but six goals shy
of promotion. The only bright spot was the debut of Fernando Torres,
the teenage talisman. It would take Luis Aragones himself, who had
masterminded the coup de grâce of their relegation, to drag Atleti
back where they belonged in 01/02. In another one of football's
never-ending quirks of fate, he would also sign goalkeeper Esteban,
who competed with German 'Mono' Burgos, the corpulent assistant
manager under Cholo Simeone today. The return of the club to the top
flight was a relief for the red and white side of Madrid. But it wasn't
much of a redemption for Gil. Mounting legal perils, financial realities
piling up, success might well have seemed hollow to him by now. Having
taken the club to incredible highs where everything seemed possible,
he had also sunk them to historic lows and turned them into a corrupt
mess of a club. Not for nothing had the club, so often the bridesmaid
and not the bride in Spanish football, been given the patronising name
Pupas—something close to Diddums. If the initial laughter from their
cross-town rivals had hurt after relegation. What hurt even more was that
Real Madrid fans simply forgot about Atleti. It was one of those perverse
epiphanies that only football can bestow: the humiliation of losing to
your rivals is better than the irrelevance of not competing with them.

Atleti legend, El Niño Torres

In 2002, Gil's many cut corners, atypical models, and misdeeds
caught up with him at last. All those long years of malfeasance and
misappropriation of funds, across Madrid and Marbella, finally came to
light. Facing charges of prevarication and influence peddling, (frankly,
it seemed as if the State was just getting started) the Supreme Court
handed down its sentence: six months of prison. But worse than that, Gil
was barred from running for office for 28 years. He was 69 years old. It
was over. In jail, he would be placed in solitary confinement. All those
that had pressed themselves to him and elbowed their way into photographs
alongside him, now flitted away, afraid of being touched by the scrofula
of his corruption. All those that had opposed and questioned Gil, Isabel
Garcia Marcos and Juan Luis Galiacho and several others, who for so
long were reviled and ignored, now stood vindicated.

As Gil would say, ideology is the pretext of the vain and the
incapable. But maybe that was just a fancy rephrasing of: principles
get in the way of action. In the end, many of those that had made their
Faustian bargain by betting on Gil would find that their bargain proved
to be, well, Faustian. Due to various legal wrangles, while Enrique
Cerezo would find himself convicted in a court of law, he was never
imprisoned due to the statute of limitations being exceeded. He took
over as club president. Miguel Angel Gil Marin, implicated in so many of
his father's deals and ventures, also avoided the judge's gavel. He
remains today the single largest shareholder.

Jesus Gil died on the 15th of May, 2004. His funeral turned into a
national event. 25,000 people turned up to pay their respects—where
else, at the Estadio Vicente Calderon. The hearse circled the stadium
three times. The masses applauded, as if Gil had given the Atleti faithful
one last trophy, one last success.

Almudena Cemetery, Gil's final resting place

So, where do we go from here? Seven years after Gil's death, Diego
Simeone, who had marshalled the club's midfield like a bodyguard
and captained Atleti to its first double in '95/'96 returned as a
manager. Success would follow, both domestically and in Europe. But more
than that, a strange sense of stability. Simeone has now been at the
club for a decade and would mould the team around a new ethos: nobody
fucking beats us. Even today, there are few worse places to be in world
football than 0-1 down to Atletico de Madrid. It could hardly be said
to be a representative legacy of Gil's running of the club. But more
in spite of it. So what is Gil's legacy?

Jesus Gil was never a football man, no matter the platitudes served
up by that silver tongue. Ironically, for all his protestations to the
contrary, for all the times he put his loathing of politics on record,
the man was a born politician—even when he was still only a used car
salesman. Because for Gil, every waking moment was an opportunity for
spin. PR was oxygen. And none of it was bad. He felt he could talk his
way in, or out, of anything. And he understood, in a far more nuanced
way than Donald Trump ever will, that while fear motivated people, it
wasn't just enough to scare them. You had to install yourself as the
answer and occasionally deliver once in a while. The schismatic nature
of Spanish politics allowed Gil to become an exponent of modern dead cat
politics long before Lyton Crosby was a twinkle in David Cameron's eye,
constantly hitting play on the same soundbite: them and us.

In Part 1 of this series, I asked the question: what was Gil beneath the
mask? Reader, by now I'm sure you've guessed that it's an impossible
question to answer. For he was a man that understood that, in political
life, it was much easier to succeed if you were whoever or whatever people
wanted you to be. He himself would say in an interview: "At 9 in the
morning I can be a communist. At 10, I can be a socialist. And at 11,
I'm right-wing."

For all his flaws, he was a man from humble beginnings that touched the
sky. But he was, and always would be, a convicted criminal, guilty of
manslaughter. Those 58 people those lost their lives in 1969 are are still
dead. And that was not the only harm that Gil caused in this world. He
left financial black holes across Spain, including the fact that only 3%
of Atletico de Madrid actually belongs to Atleti fans. Gil played on
the hopes and dreams of ordinary people. Many of them working class and
poor. From the Atleti faithful such as the homeless man that gave him
his last 5000 pesetas, to the voters of Marbella, to Limamou Mbengue who
today finds himself back in Senegal. He lives in a cabin in Dakar with
his wife, his son, and 13 other people. "I was with Atletico de Madrid
for five years without receiving a single cent. They didn't even pay
my public transport." He makes his living today selling fruit in the
street. When the scandal about the 'fake' players broke, Gil's son,
Miguel Angel, approached Mbengue and promised him a good future if he
would testify in their favour. "So, the judge asked me, are you worth
300 million pesetas? And I said, yes. When I finished up my contract,
and here I swear on my mother's tomb, I swear on my son's life,
I went to the stadium and I spoke with Miguel Angel Gil and asked him
about the future he promised me and he laughed in my face. He told me,
no, I don't remember that." Holding back his emotion while speaking
to Antenna 3, Mbengue added. "I would like to speak to the supporters
of Atletico de Madrid because I have a lot of respect for them, and
for me, they are the most noble fanbase in the world. But I sweated
in that shirt for five years for free, and I defended it all over the
world. And I believe that Miguel Angel Gil and the Gil family are a
cancer to Atletico de Madrid."

Miguel Angel Gil

Gil also fanned the flames of populism and pre-democracy nostalgia in
a country which really, really could have done without it. Franco's
totalitarian regime in Spain lasted until his death, well into the
1970s. They are still digging up unidentified bones to this day. (Amnesty
International puts Spain only second to Cambodia in the world for mass
graves).

 Did Gil spend sleepless nights wondering how things would have turned
 out if only he'd paid for a damn surveyor. Turned down the money from
 the SPAR dinner? Or was it the tragedy that made him? Forcing him to
 cover a mountain of compensation, driving him towards greater and more
 visible platforms on which to build his castles in the sky?

And yet, for all the savvy and cunning, for all the aces up his sleeves,
for all the thousands of people who queued up to believe him, to vote
for him, to anoint him as their leader, in the end, the ultimate naivete
was that of Gil himself—to believe that he could go forever. Like the
figure of Don Quixote he likened himself to on the night of winning
the double, all those years of charging at giants would, in the end,
prove futile. The giants are immoveable.

By the end, his whole life had become a tessellation of
transgressions. Did he wonder how it had all gone so far? Did he ask
himself why he had taken the path that he had? And did he question,
in quiet moments alone with his horse, who he had become in his old
age—titan? Tycoon? Tyrant? I wonder if even Gil knew who he was in
those final days.

As his son, Miguel Angel Gil Marin said: "I always drew a distinction
between the man and the character. As a person, he was one of the best
human beings I've ever met, for his values, and as a father. But as
a character in the public eye, as a populist, the pendulum swings from
love to hate... I tried to hide from that character. Because I loved the
man. When you live so many hours next to a persona such as my father...
I wouldn't like it, for example, as his woman. To suffer it. Because
in the end it is suffering, more than enjoying it. Because he was always
in the eye of the hurricane, both in politics and in business."

If his own son was bisecting Gil's personality into different
categories, sixteen years after his death and never having met him,
I certainly have no definitive, black and white answer. Can a man's
actions and convictions define him? In Gil's empire of shadows and
half-truths, perhaps the most plausible answer is that Gil was who his
mother had made him into. As Gil's brother, Severiano Gil y Gil, would
say to HBO: "our mother would tell us: even if you're miserable, you
hold your head up high like a serpent, never let them see that you're
sunk because they'll crush you underfoot."

How will he be remembered in time? A larger than life figure who made
fortunes, both for himself and others, forged destinies, but also heralded
ruin and death? How many have done what he has done? How many men or
women have built towns out of thin air? How many have brought glory to
thousands of supporters flooding the streets of their city in historic
jubilance? There again, how many are responsible for the death of 58
people? Incalculable financial damages that destroyed dreams? As for
what Gil's legacy is, even now I'm honestly not sure. Maybe it's
simply this: nobody fucked with the Jesus.

But I give the last word to the man himself. It's what he would
have wanted. To the question: what epitaph would you have on your
gravestone? Gil responded: "I don't know. Maybe something like:
Here lies an imbecile who thought things could be better. Yes, that's
it. And the only bitterness I will take with me to the next world? That
I believed that Spain could have been better."

Jesus Gil y Gil

=== [History time] How the Gil family became owners of Atleti and why
many people hate them for that (Reddit) ===
==== [History time] How the Gil family became owners of Atleti and why
many people hate them for that (part 1)  ====
self.atletico
submitted 1 year ago * by maeseCaracorner
Following the results of the 2nd r/atletico survey it is possible that
many subscribers were left wondering about the question on the current
board of directors. Why? Aren't we doing great lately? Especially
notable is the difference between respondents from the Madrid area and
the rest of the world.
My personal opinion is that someone is doing their job really well
at Atleti. Ever since Torres was sold, almost all signings have been
spot-on, creating value both on the pitch and in the treasury of the
club. The fan base is expanding, we have good results and reducing our
huge debt. Simeone was a gift of the gods, but let's not forget that
before him Aguirre put us back in Champions League and Quique made us
champions after 15 years, which is something many of us feared would
never happen again.
I don't think the mastermind behind this is either the president Cerezo
or CEO and majority shareholder Gil Marin. However, at the very least,
we need to give them credit for letting the right people do their job
and not interfering with them. Someone is finally thinking long-run and
our current good situation is a result of it.
Why can't many people forgive them? I'm starting this series so
that r/atletico knows the history of how Gil Marin's father (Jesus
Gil) became president of the fan-owned club by popular vote and then,
together with Cerezo, transformed it into a private company fully owned
by himself. He had tons of problems with justice, went to prison several
times and the club was found to be used as a money laundering machine,
which ended with a judicial administration and a relegation to Segunda
Division that same year. Notice that I'm not saying "allegedly"
because all of this was judged and all appeals are final. That's the
tl;dr if you want to stop here.
This is not really OC; I'm basing it on a brilliant series by
the user Garate9 in the colchonero.com forum (link to the Spanish
original). However, that series was aimed at a different public -
people familiar with most of the names and with Spanish politics and
justice system. I'm not translating directly: I'm simplifying some
things, cutting some others and giving some background where I think a
non-Spanish fan may need it.
The original series had 8 chapters and was super long. I'll try to make
this one as shorter and readable as possible, but the story is still
complex and I don't want to miss important details. Also, I found that
there are almost no sources about this in English in the whole internet,
so someone has to be the first.
Chapter 1. Gil becomes president
To understand why Gil won the 1987 election we need to think of
the situation those years. Atleti was in a decadence phase after the
glorious decade of the 70s. Since the early 80s, Atleti had started to
sell its most prominent players in order to make ends meet and refrain
from expensive signings.
In this context, Vicente Calderon (yes, the one after whom the stadium
is named, who had been president during the best years) had to come
back to put some order in 1982. Despite these financial problems, a
very decent team was arranged thanks to the excellent academy we had,
and a couple of good signings. That team managed to stay at the top side
of the table, but was never really a challenger for the league. In fact,
the 80s ended with no titles, except for the Cup of 1985.
Calderon's last season (1986/87) was terrible in league, where we
finished out of the top group and could not contend for the top six
spots (it was the only Spanish league to ever be played with a play-off
system). We made it to the Cup final, but at that moment it felt like
a lottery that had just gone lucky.
In this atmosphere of low morale, Calderon passed away and new elections
were called. Several candidates were contending, but what really made
the difference was Jesus Gil's commitment to sign Paulo Futre at
his own expense. Futre was the star of Porto, who had just shocked the
world in the European Cup final against Bayern with skills comparable
to Maradona's.
All candidates promised great things, but this one put his money where
his mouth was and came forward with a binding contract with Futre. The
majority of fans voted for him for this reason, and he delivered.
Other of his big projects were to make the club more profitable by mass
sponsoring, opening luxury restaurants in the stadium or even making the
Manzanares river navigable and opening boat restaurants (!?). In a way,
he was a visionary of modern football.
But, who was Jesus Gil anyway? Let's stop the story for a moment.
He was a major celebrity in Spain, but maybe you guys need some
introduction. It's difficult to describe him with words: self-made man,
trashy, funny, morbidly obese, hot-headed, showman, tacky, irreverent,
simple, corrupt, witty... all of them fit. But sometimes an image talks
louder than words. Jesus Gil was, over all things, this guy. He was
also this guy and this guy.
I watch this and I can't stay mad at him. After all, he was a very funny
and relatable man. He had his own TV show where he appeared giving the
least appropriate life advice. He talked about his time in prison the same
way you would talk about your holidays. Most importantly he was one of
us. He was the exact opposite of the posh madridista stereotype. He hated
Real Madrid's guts and wouldn't care to say it out loud. He enjoyed
every minute of being Atleti's president. He repeated constantly how
he wanted to be buried in the Atleti flag he kept in his office, and he
apparently was when he died in 2004 (SIDE NOTE: I say apparently because,
like Elvis, there's a myth about him faking his own death to escape
justice. Everyone always considered it a legend until last year, when
this video was captured. That's Villar, president of the Spanish FA,
asking Gil Marin "How's your father doing?", to which he replies
"Fine, fine." WHAT. THE. FUCK.)
He made an impressive career as a real estate developer, which earned
him a big fortune and also his first spell in prison (1969-1971) when
a building of his star development project collapsed due to faulty
materials, killing 56.
Around the time he was planning the conversion of Atleti into a private
company, he created his own political party, whose initials were his name:
GIL (Grupo Independiente Liberal - classy as fuck). He won a majority
in the town of Marbella, home of some of the most exclusive compounds
in the Costa del Sol, basically by pumping money like no other local
campaign had ever done. It is said that he would go to every bar in town,
order a coffee, chat around with everyone, pay with a banknote of 10,000
pesetas and leave the change as a tip (coffee was ca. 100 pesetas). He
was a whole new level of populism.
Any mayor during the golden years of the Spanish real estate bubble
had chances to be corrupt. They had the power to reassign land plots
for building purposes, which made their prices skyrocket. The clear
confusion of interests between local governments, savings banks and
real estate developers led to one of the most shameful episodes of our
recent history. But Gil took it to the next stage. Marbella boomed
as a center for high-end leisure and attracted all sorts of sketchy
real estate investors. Among them it is said the Russian mob, who would
have taken advantage of the vicinity to Gibraltar and made Marbella its
headquarters in Western Europe. Corruption became the system, but since
money didn't stop coming, it was sustainable and every single layer of
local government benefitted from it. In the short term, it looked like
Marbella was swimming in money. He won two re-elections as mayor that way.
When shit hit the fan in the 2000s, the Spanish government had to
dissolve the municipality and appoint external administrators for the
town, because every single elected official (GIL's and opposition)
was either in prison or indicted in the largest corruption proceedings
known to date in Spanish judicial history.
Well, now you know the man. It's important because the connection between
Marbella and Atleti is a key part of the story. Let's leave it for
the next chapter.

==== [History time] How the Gil family became owners of Atleti and why
many people hate them for that (part 2) self.atletico ====
submitted 1 year ago by maeseCaracorner
On my last post we learnt about who was Jesus Gil and how he became
Atleti's president in the first place. Today we will see how he went
from president to owner. Again, credit to Garate9 of colchonero.com. This
translation/adaptation is based on his work.
Chapter 2. Atletico's transformation into a private company.
We left the story when Gil brought Futre. He went on to sign some
other big names, but most of them past their prime like Goikoetxea and
Lopez Ufarte (not to miss for Armando Ufarte, Atleti legend from the
60/70s). He also fired Luis Aragones as coach. These first years are
marked by turmoil, constant changes of manager, including an uprising
by the squad which ended in the sale of several important players that
were very poorly replaced.
Some mediocre years came until 90/91, with the signings of Vizcaino
and Schuster. On that season we ended as runner-ups in league and won
the Cup after eliminating Barcelona and Real Madrid. For the next year,
good news: Luis Aragones was hired as coach again.
Season 91/92 was the best in many years. We ended second again after
fighting for the league until the very end, but most importantly, we
beat Real Madrid in the Cup final at Santiago Bernabeu. This is one
of the historic matches of Atletico with goals by Futre and Schuster,
with Luis on the bench.
Gil seemed to have finally touched the right key and he was popular among
the fans. It's around this time when Gil put in place the plan he had
in mind since the very beginning: transforming the club into a company
and becoming owner of it.
Explanation: football teams had been historically organized in the legal
form of "sports clubs". A sports club has autonomy to dictate its
own rules and to accept members at its will, who become owners of a
proportional share of the club. The main difference between a club and
a company is that clubs accept members personally and all members are
strictly equal and can't accumulate more than one share. Companies
follow the capitalistic logic, where shares are tradable assets that
can be exchanged for money and be accumulated.
In the 80s and early 90s almost all clubs in the Spanish league were
highly indebted; and Atleti was no exception. It was argued that the
legal form of sports clubs was inefficient by modern standards, because
it diluted the responsibility and created wrong incentives. In a way
it seems true; as fans we care exclusively for the sports results and
tend to neglect the financial part of the game, which (it was argued)
was the cause for the irresponsible indebtedness. Converting clubs into
companies would solve the problem, because the owners of shares would
care both for the sports part (as it is the main source of revenue)
but also of the long term fiscal soundness of the entity. In principle,
nothing prevented from allotting one share of the company to each member
of the club, so that the property could theoretically still remain with
the fan base.
(BTW time has proven this hypothesis wrong).
Gil was one of the proponents of this solution and he promoted it strongly
with the help of the most famous sports pundit at the time in Spain,
who was friends with him. They lobbied for it and sold it as the miracle
solution for all of football's problems. In 1990 a law was passed
whereby all sports clubs playing in professional leagues (1st and 2nd
division in the case of football) needed to become companies by 1992,
except the ones who had positive financial results for the last 4 leagues
(a taylor-made exception for guess who).
A special type of company was regulated for this purpose (sports company),
but if you read the law, it really is fundamentally the same as any
other commercial company except for a few reporting requirements, and
the minimum share capital (think Eibar last year).
So the transformation had to start. Gil was granted authorization to
skip the 1991 election because of this, although, to be honest, he would
most probably have won. But here is the catch: in order to clean the
balance sheets of the clubs, the new companies would have to start over
with a share capital that set-off the current debt. In other words, if a
club was worth 500 million, but owed other 500 million, the new company
could not have a share capital of 500 million and just assume the debt;
it needed to have a capital of 1000 million.
Given the huge debt of many clubs, the high price to pay for the same
share of the company discouraged current members (socios) from buying
shares of the new companies. Only a very small minority of shares were
sold among the former socios, as Gil expected. With this situation,
the deadline for the incorporation of the company (30 June) came close
and Atleti was nearly 2,000 million pesetas short in share capital
(12 mio € not counting inflation, a lot back then). This meant the
disqualification to play professional football, i.e., the team that
had just amazed the world with Schuster and Futre's goals in the Cup
final against Madrid at Bernabeu was going to be relegated to the third
division (2ª B). This was the thrill Gil wanted to make his appearance.
Everybody was expecting that he would somehow manage to avert the
disaster. At the very last moment, 15 minutes before midnight, Gil
appeared as a savior and saved the day. It was the perfect image for him:
without Gil, Atleti was doomed; Gil had saved Atleti; Gil was Atleti.
There are two stories about how this happened:
1- Gil's "official" story: at the very last minute, he obtained
a credit by putting all his personal fortune as guarantee, bought the
remaining shares and saved the team (and coincidentally became its owner).
2- The story that the Supreme Court of Spain considered as proven in
its judgment of 4 June 2004: Gil and Cerezo were co-authors of a crime
of undue appropriation and took advantage of their position in the club
to divert money from it and make it pay for itself (in their names).
What you need to understand here is that in Spanish criminal law all
felonies EXPIRE. This means, if there is no prosecution started within
a certain number of years, no charges can be pressed anymore. Public
opinion rages often about this, but most legal professionals consider
it necessary.
The thing is, it is not always super clear when a crime was
"completed" and the clock for the expiration starts ticking,
especially with financial crimes. So in this case, Gil's defense lost
in the first and second instance courts, which considered the crime
not expired and went on to judge him as guilty. After appealing, the
Supreme Court had a more favorable interpretation about the expiration
date and released him of charges on the basis of expiry alone, but did not
contradict that the facts had happened. This resulted in the odd situation
of a judgment saying "well, we know this happened but we can't punish
you" (in a normal situation, courts don't even judge the facts if they
have expired, so there's no "guilty" or "innocent" verdict).
So, how did he do it? We'll let the Supreme Court speak for itself:
"When he first gained the presidency, Jesus Gil had decided to make
the club his property. For that purpose, he tried to confuse the club's
estate with his own." (...)
"With this intent, Jesus Gil, assisted by Enrique Cerezo, made
Atletico de Madrid recognize debts in his favor, not previously
reflected in the club's accounts, by means of deeds signed before
public notaries..."
To summarize, by 1992 Gil was a creditor of the club for around 2,000
mio pesetas, corresponding to federative rights for players he claims
to have paid with his personal money and then assigned to the club. All
of this under recognition by the club (i.e. Cerezo).
Gil wanted to pay for the shares of the new company by cancelling the
supposed debt he had against the club, which coincidentally is around
the same amount that was required for the minimum share capital. The
sports authorities refuse, because with a higher debt, the necessary
share capital would rise to 4,000 mio.
"When Jesus Gil realized that his plan to obtain the property of the
new company via debt set-off was not feasible, he sought a new solution
for this purpose..."
That new solution consisted in the club assigning Jesus Gil the
federative rights of all 30 players in the team (à la third-party
ownership) as a payment for the fake debt. Then, as soon as the club
would be transformed into a sports company, he would re-sell them to the
team for an amount equivalent to what he had to pay in exchange for the
shares of the new company.
"This transaction was made to avoid complying with the legal
requirements of the transformation of clubs into companies, both in
relation to the calculation of the minimum share capital, and to the
actual payment of such capital. Jesus Gil would so be immediately
reimbursed of the money he paid for the shares with the re-sale of the
federative rights of the players..."
"Since the payments had no other function than simulating the purchase
of the share capital, in order to have them immediately reimbursed,
Jesus Gil wrote a letter on 30 June 1992 to the bank Banco de Vitoria
requesting, as president of the new company, the repayment to his own
personal account of 1,300 mio in exchange for the federative rights of
the players" (...)
Similarly, another letter was sent to Credit Lyonnais on 3 July 1992
requesting the repayment of 650 mio to Enrique Cerezo, for the same
concepts (...).
Jesus Gil and Enrique Cerezo had signed a different agreement whereby
the latter sold his recently acquired shares to the former (...). This
way, Jesus Gil became owner of 95% of the shares, without him or Enrique
Cerezo having executed an actual payment of either 1,300 mio or 650 mio.,
and thanks to the debts he had been recognized in his favor..."
To summarize:
A- Gil and Cerezo buy the shares with a loan for 2,000 million pesetas.
B- Gil charges Atletico de Madrid plc 2,000 million pesetas for the
re-sale of its own players.
C- Gil and Cerezo return the 2,000 million and Gil buys Cerezo his stake,
as previously agreed. He did sell him later 9% of his 95%.
Result: Gil becomes owner of Atletico de Madrid with money coming from
the club itself. Nothing can be done now, since no one claimed against
it until it was too late.
You might think that this trick had in fact saved Atleti. This is
what many people thought and why most fans supported Gil for many many
years. At the end of the day, if it's for the better and it doesn't affect
the team's results, maybe it's forgivable. For the last chapter we will
see that in fact Atleti's judicial history only starts there. The worst
was yet to come.

==== [History time] The rollercoaster of the 90's. (Part 3 of the Gil
saga) self.atletico ====
submitted 1 year ago by maeseCaracorner
On the first part of the series we learnt about how Jesus Gil
became president, and on the second part how the Spanish justice
considered proven that he used his position to become owner of Atleti
fraudulently. My initial idea was to just write 3 episodes on the
history of the legal problems of the club and only mention the sports
part lightly. I decided to add an additional episode about how the team
did during these years to give a bit more of context. Also we get to
revisit some great moments (yay!!).
Again, credit to Garate9 of colchonero.com. This translation/adaptation
is based on his work.
===== Chapter 3: The rollercoaster before the downfall =====
Before discussing the legal stuff, we left the story in 1992, with
a remarkable Cup champion squad, two international stars (Futre and
Schuster), both of Spain's centerbacks and a great project led by
Atleti legend Luis Aragones.
Gil had just "saved" the team and it looked like we had someone
sensible in charge, we were building a great squad and had solid
project. We were back to our place. Sadly, 92/93 was a terrible
year. After a great start in league and CWC, a bad streak put us behind in
the table. A bad match drawn against Madrid at home tipped the scale. Luis
criticized Futre's apathy and they argued. Gil supported the coach. As
a result, Futre was sold to Benfica, which proved a bad move for both
Atleti and him.
That was the "official" story. Now I'll give you just a taste of
how Gil's dirty businesses affected the team on the pitch: years later,
when responding before justice about his corruption scandals in Marbella
(the posh holiday town Gil was mayor of, remember part 1), Gil declared
that "I have never taken any money from Marbella to Atletico; all
the contrary. I had to sell Futre in order to pay the town's salaries
because it was broke." That's just great.
In fact, they had clashing characters, but they weren't enemies. Futre
himself re-hired Aragones as a coach when he was sports director in
the 2000s, and when asked about their bad relationship in the past he
answered that his signing for Benfica had nothing to do with Luis and,
as far as he knew, it was caused by financial problems. He even dedicated
him a very touching obituary (Spanish only, sorry).
Well, Luis resigned after another terrible match against Barça and
Schuster saw the panorama and left as soon as he could. Another great
project in ruins.
Some terrible signings followed the next few years and again, chronic
instability. In 93/94 we had six different coaches. In 94/95 we had
Maturana, the successful Colombian coach who impressed the world in the
USA World Cup. He asked for Klinsmann and the German was willing to sign,
but then Gil said that his alleged homosexuality could be a problem in
the dressing room. Well, he said it with different, blunter words.
Those two seasons we were really close of playing the relegation play-off
(4 points and 1 point), and were only saved in the last few weeks.
95/96. Our new coach Radomir Antic came to this desolation. The
signings that year were unimpressive. Molina and Santi, from the almost
relegated Albacete. Penev, discarded from Valencia and coming out of
an illness. Pantic, a complete unknown Serbian, personal request from
Antic. Biagini, Correa, Roberto, promising but untested.
Well, these questionable signings, together with the guys who had been
struggling to avoid relegation for two years, would end up forming
the line-up every single colchonero (old enough) can recite by heart:
Molina, Toni, Geli, Solozabal, Santi, Vizcaino, Caminero, Simeone,
Pantic, Kiko, Penev.
For the first half of the season we were a machine, with the
"advantage" of not playing in Europe, we seemed like safe champions
by February. Then the important Cup fixtures started, including a
legendary match against Valencia, and fatigue started to take its toll
(the XI above almost never changed). Add to this that that year the
league featured 22 teams and lasted 42 weeks (Celta and Sevilla were
supposed to be relegated for administrative reasons but the FA backed off
last minute). Similarly to 2014, we could have closed the deal weeks in
advance, but nerves failed. Week 41 we draw against Tenerife. Aguilera,
rojiblanco at heart, missed a clear chance that would have complicated
things enormously. Last match against the weak Albacete. We needed a
victory and we didn't miss this time. Extasis.
As for the Cup, we had eliminated fierce opposition towards the final
against Barcelona. That match was extremely hard, went on to extra time
and was decided by Pantic's only header goal in his whole career. What
a way of winning a final! A goal by the undisputed MVP of the season,
unknown to the world just a few months ago!
Only double in our history. Gil ordered a bust of Pantic to be sculpted in
remembrance, and this bouquet of fresh flowers still appears every single
match on the south-east corner in his honor, brought by this adorable
lady. Don't dare to touch it or the Calderon will be all over you.
The following year started full of excitement for our participation
in Champions League for the first time in many years. With some
reinforcements (even Ronaldo was in the pipeline but Barça intervened),
the backbone of that champion squad remained. The team was not up to
the expectations: we were out of the fight for the league soon and
Barça eliminated us in Cup with a hysterical 5-4. In Champions League
we faced Ajax, a powerhouse back then, in quarterfinals. We drew 1-1 in
Amsterdam and lost to an extra time goal at home, after a missed penalty
by Esnaider. It was hard at the moment because expectations were high,
but all in all it was not a terrible year, considering what came later.
97/98 saw some impressive signings: Juninho, Lardin and Vieri. Even
Futre was back! Only the Italian lived up to the expectations, with
beauties such as this one. Juninho started too focused in Brazil NT, had
some injuries and was ultimately wrecked by Celta's (later Madrid's)
Michel Salgado. It was a shame because that guy was on his way to be
a superstar. Lardin was a huge disappointment. Futre was way past his
prime and very conflictive, he eventually left to Japan.
The midfield suffered without Simeone. It was a very inconsistent year
with great matches followed by terrible matches. We made it to the
UEFA semifinals though, but at the end of the year Antic, Geli, Pantic,
Caminero and Vizcaino left. In two years there was nothing remaining
from that legendary double squad.
Just before the start of the following season Vieri leaves and is
not replaced. The fans were confused: where did the money go? Arrigo
Sacchi was the new coach, but he lasted less than a year. Antic came
back after him and the season ended with a Cup final very badly lost
against Valencia.
One word defines this era: inconsistency. The team was never bad, we were
undisputedly the third "biggest" team in Spain (the dispute for the
2nd place was definitely lost to Barcelona in the 80s), and had enough
prestige and fanbase to attract first line players. But no project seemed
to last. At least twice in these 8 years we had top-class squads capable
of absolutely anything. Both times the project was in shambles when the
first obstacles came. Every season seemed like a lottery. Still, we got
to see our best year ever, some European action and some finals. Behind
the scenes, a very dark business was cooking and it exploded in season
1999/2000, the worst of our history. The last episode will be devoted
to what happened that year on the pitch and outside of it.

==== [History time] How a whole generation of atleticos got PTSD (final
part of the Gil saga). self.atletico ====
submitted 1 year ago by maeseCaracorner
Previously: how Jesus Gil became president, how he used his position
to become owner of Atleti fraudulently and how the 90s seemed like a
rollercoaster under his management. For this last episode, we will see
how shit finally hit the fan (pun intended).
Inspired by Garate9 of colchonero.com and his brilliant saga. For this
part I used other journalistic sources too (El Mundo, El Pais) and a
lot of my own memory.
Chapter 4: Highway to Hell
For 1999/2000 we had great signings. Toni, Olympic champion GK. Gamarra,
great CB. Hasselbaink, Premier League's topscorer. On the bench Claudio
Ranieri, Valencia's rainmaker. Expectations were better than ever. Who
would tell.
We beat Real Madrid for the last time in 15 years. The next time it
happened r/atletico already existed.
Otherwise the team was already doing terrible (4th to last) when the news
came and hit like thunder: as part of the judicial proceedings against
Jesus Gil, the club was seized and put under judicial administration.
Why? Short answer: because the club itself was instrumental in many of
his dirty maneuvers.
Remember Marbella from chapter 1? The posh holiday city where Gil won the
election as mayor? It is known as the "ground zero" of the Spanish
real estate bubble. Gil wanted to expand his business and promoted
candidates in other coastal cities in the area, many of which won the
1999 local election (including the autonomous city of Ceuta). The joke
was starting to turn too serious and someone high up decided to open
a thorough investigation. They found corruption was so widespread and
prices were so artificially inflated it ended up as the center of the
biggest corruption scandal known to date.
As it turned out, one of the ways Jesus Gil was laundering the money
from his corrupt business was by making it look as legal payments to a
company of his property: Atletico de Madrid. The town of Marbella paid
a huge amount to sponsor Atleti, but it was just a diversion to take
the money out of the public treasury into Gil's private estate. You
can only imagine the public prosecutor displaying in court our glorious
red&white shirt as "Exhibit A" of his case.
Wasn't this to benefit Atleti? Not really. At the same time Gil was
diverting money out of Atleti into his own pocket. The most picturesque
way was by signing unknown African "rising stars" on his expense
and reselling them to Atleti for a huge profit. Actually, they were just
random people, some of them refugees who were seeking asylum in Europe,
and never got to play a single minute for the team. If you think this
is too absurd to be true, think again: I'm just quoting the Supreme
Court judgment of 2004 I mentioned in part 2 of this series.
Another sketchy business was that of the overprice for
signings. Apparently, Atleti was paying above-market sums for players
through opaque Dutch companies (that's why Radek Bejbl or Bogdanovic
cost almost as much as Ronaldo to Barcelona). The explanation was that
it was a forward payment for free players. These companies would break
the rule that forbids negotiating a contract directly with a player
until 6 months before his engagement with his current team is over. Most
payments were stopped by the judicial administrators, so we'll never
know how stinky was this. Best case scenario, just circumventing FIFA
rules. Worst case who knows.
On 3 April 2000, judicial administrator Luis Manuel Rubi, after auditing
the accounts, declared that the club was "technically bankrupt". That
month's salaries were paid thanks to a favorable FIFA decision regarding
a payment owed by Glasgow Rangers for the signing of Romanian defender
Daniel Prodan.
When the final judgment about the Marbella sponsorship was delivered in
2002, Gil was found guilty but Atletico was declared not liable for the
monetary debt. Thank God because that would have ended the team forever.
So, this was the situation. For most of the year the club was run by
judicial administrators who only cared for auditing and finding evidence
against Gil. Players and staff didn't know if they were going to be
paid. Rumor was the club was bankrupt, and it was finally confirmed. Many
feared it would be relegated to amateur category or disappear altogether.
In this atmosphere we kept losing and losing. The league started really
bad anyway, but the judicial administration only made things worse. 3
weeks to go and we needed to win every single match, and have Oviedo
or Numancia lose every match, just to avoid relegation. We tied against
Oviedo, with a missed penalty by Hasselbaink, and the fate was sealed.
And here comes what I consider an absolutely life-defining moment. Older
atleticos around please confirm if you see it like that too. Somehow in
the middle of this craze we made it to the Copa del Rey final against
the relatively accessible Espanyol. We were already relegated when we
played it.
That was it! We are Atleti, capable of the best and the worst! If
someone is going to be relegated and be champions at the same time;
play in second division and in Europe at the same time, that has to be
us!! And it's not like we're facing Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia or
Deportivo, it's Espanyol. We really can do this!
Well, not only we lost. We lost to this (TW: Tamudo). On top of that,
Toni, our GK, was a former Espanyol teammate.
It was sadistic. Can't the Gods just relegate us the normal way? Do
we have to be special even for this?
After this horror show, the number of season ticket holders almost
doubled, but we didn't get the promotion on the first year on mere
goal difference. Destiny tricking us again. On the second year Luis
Aragones renounced to play the Champions League spot he had earned for
Mallorca and came back home to put his beloved team back in its place. We
didn't have to celebrate our centennial in Segunda. Gil died and the
Supreme Court declared the expiration of the fraudulent appropriation
of the club (see part 2), so the property of Atleti will remain with
his heirs until they decide to sell it. Several gray years, and we got
to this, this, this, this, this, this this, this and this. Also this,
which is the most proud I've ever felt.
This is who we are. Not everyone is brave enough to be one of us, and
that's OK. If we wanted comfort, we would have chosen another team.

=== [History Time] The lies about Atletico Aviacion ===

self.atletico
submitted 2 years ago * by carpetanoSimeone

This is a direct translation of the three articles written by Victor
Hegelman debunking the common myths about Atletico Aviacion (the
team that existed from 1939 to 1946 after the fusion of Atletico and
Aviacion Nacional). I'll translate the other two pieces later . You
can read the original article in Spanish here.
My English is limited, so please forgive any weird wording or grammar.
Bibliography used for all the three parts:

Book: "Las grandes mentiras del futbol español" by Bernardo de
Salazar and Felix Martialay, mainly the chapter "Rojiblancos con
alas".

"Historia de la Liga española", by MARCA (1.989).

Two Club Atletico de Madrid histories,one by AS and other by MARCA
published in the early 90's

"Historia del Centenario del Atletico de Madrid", by Bernardo de
Salazar, published by diario AS in 2.003.

"Historia del Centenario del Real Madrid" written by Salazar too
and published by Diario AS (2.001).

Testimonies of contemporary players' descendants. The names won't be
disclosed.

==== Chapter 1: The birth of Atletico Aviacion ====

As it's usually said, let's start by the beginning. Some ignorant using
Internet have thrown to the world this sentence: "Atletico Aviacion
(current Atletico de Madrid) a team created during the Civil War by
the Fascist Army that used later the Francoist Government's assistance
to win two Ligas. [TN:* Real] Madrid remained in the capital as the
only Republican team". The nonsense accumulation in three lines is
so remarkable that I'm going to be part by part, and on this occasion
I will answer the question: "Where did Atletico Aviacion come
from?". Prepare yourself because although I'll try to summarize I'm
not going to promise anything.

Let's start by Atleti. What was their sport situation when the War
begun? The Athletic Club (named "de Madrid" to identify their home
city and not because it was part of their name) played the season 35-36
in Primera Division to finally be relegated to Segunda after a dramatic
match against Sevilla in Madrid that ended 2-3 (the one of the famous
-although unknown for those who lie- penalty missed by Chacho in the
final minutes).

During the War, Athletic Club as other teams reduced their activity to the
minimum, although they play some charity matches, for example one against
a team created by Republican soldiers named "Batallon Deportivo".

Far from Madrid, and in their own, another team created during the
military conflict, the Aviacion Nacional, was born in Salamanca in the
Matacan air base during mid 1937, counting on voluntary and replacement
soldiers, with the end of playing charity matches against other military
teams, obviously from the same side.

However, during summer 1938 the Battle of the Ebro provoked the move of
Franco's General Headquarters to Zaragoza, so the air force team went
there. They played friendly games against Racing de Santander, Alaves,
Zaragoza and Real Union among others, as well as official matches playing
as a "proper club". This way, they participated in the Campeonato
Regional de Aragon, winning it after beating (in official matches I
insist) Recuperacion de Levante, 80ª Compañia de Automovilismo, and in
the final Real Zaragoza in their old stadium "Campo de Torrero". Note
that Aviacion Nacional weren't precisely the only military or Nationalist
team created during the Civil War. Three years were a long time, and it
isn't strange that the military sphere were the only place where sports
activities were carried out in a society where the civil population had
enough worrying about escaping or surviving at all costs.

The "flying" victory in the Campeonato Regional allowed them to
participate in the 1st Copa del Generalisimo [TN: name given to "Copa
del Rey" during Francoist Spain] where they knocked-out Betis in the
round of 16, losing to Sevilla CF in quarterfinals with a refereeing in
the second leg that some contemporary reporters valued as favourable
to the Seville team. In fact, the "referee" [TN:* original in
English] whistled the full-time some minutes before because Sevilla
fans invaded the pitch when they scored the 4th goal that gave them the
qualification. Quite strange regarding the Franco's team that received
favours to win, isn't it? But let's go on.

The War is over the April 1st 1939 and Aviacion Nacional, far from
wanting to disappear, set their HQ (or just domicile) in Madrid,
Paseo Martinez Campos 30, and their contact person was Alferez [2nd
Lieutenant] Salamanca.

Obviously, there was a problem. After the end of the War, the air force
team had nowhere to land, and although they had participated in the 1st
Copa del Generalisimo they can't be just added to Primera or Segunda
Division. They could have begun from the regional tiers and follow
the tortuous promotions path to the top tiers, but that idea wasn't
considered by the blue board. A merge with an existent team was necessary.

It's true that the idea of getting along with Aviacion Nacional was
interesting not only for the military, but also for the main Madrilenian
teams. The first team that ran to pay their respects and ask for long
lasting relations to Martinez Campos 30 was Madrid Club de Futbol
(the "Real" was taking off the name during the II Republic), through
one of their most relevant leaders Don Pedro Parages. A question is
raised: Wasn't Madrid, according to that uneducated guy, the Republican
team? Nope. They ran like deer to join the "Fascist Air Force",
fact that, in the other hand, was the first option considered by the
blue soldiers.

Nevertheless, the deal wasn't reached. The reasons weren't related to
the supposed Madridista republicanism. The reported reasons were the
Aviadores high pretensions, especially those regarding the presence of
officers in their board, something that they didn't accept (I insist, not
because ideological questions) because the fusion would mean "too many
roosters in the same pen". Also, they were bothered by the presence of
the word "Aviacion" in the future club's name, relegating Madrid to
a secondary level, as well as the modification of the crest to include
the Aviacion coat of arms, although those were minor discrepancies
regarding the above-mentioned point.

Madrid's renounce opened two new options to Aviacion Nacional. The first
one was the Nacional de Madrid, team from Chamberi Neighbourhood. The
advantages of this alternative were evident: Nacional owns a pitch ("El
Parral", close to "Las Ventas" bullfight arena), and regarding
the name, the soldiers wouldn't even have to change theirs because the
merged team's name would be Aviacion Nacional.

The other option was Athletic Club (de Madrid). The War had destroyed a
club in crisis after the 1936 relegation. They didn't even own a pitch
to play because the Metropolitano had been devastated because it was the
first defense line in the front of Moncloa and Ciudad Universitaria during
the siege of Madrid. However, they offered a place in Segunda Division,
something that Nacional [de Madrid] couldn't. They offered their board's
long experience and a squad that still had important pre-War players,
like Guillermo, Mesa, Gabilondo, Elicegui or Arencibia. Other players
were unusable as they were waiting to be distributed in POW camps,
hidden after fighting for the Republican Side (coño, wasn't Atleti
the Fascist team?), they had fled with the Basque Team (like Urquiola),
or they had fallen in combat (Angel Arocha).

The Aviadores would contribute their organization, matured during the
War, some own funds (not too much as the time will prove), the military
infrastructure, big deal in a destroyed Spain (buses for the trips,
food...) and a sports team quite interesting with the famous Ricardo
Zamora as manager and a good number of players that will become Spanish
Football legends, like German, Machin, Aparicio, Campos, Vazquez, etc.

Then the interest was mutual, but for the rojiblancos it was a crucial
question. The Atletico board members Touzon, Fernandez Cabello and
Galindez exposed to the rest of members that in case of not reaching an
agreement with the Voladores there was a real risk of disappearing. The
stances came closer, and finally, the October 4th 1939 in the Athletic
locals in Calle Alcala, the agreements were signed creating the Athletic
Aviacion Club, presided by the Commandant Francisco Vives. The name
Atletico Aviacion came a year later when the foreign words were banned
from the football teams (among others, Atletico de Bilbao, Real Gijon
and Real Santander were born).

Victor Hegelman.

==== Chapter 2: Their right to play in Primera Division ====
self.atletico
History[History Time] The lies about Atletico Aviacion.
submitted 1 year ago by carpetanoSimeone

This is a direct translation of the second article of the three written
by Victor Hegelman to debunk the common myths about Atletico Aviacion
(the team that existed from 1939 to 1946 after the fusion of Atletico
and Aviacion Nacional). You can read here the first chapter, and here
the original version in Spanish of the second article. The pictures
aren't part of the original article.

Again, my English is limited, so please forgive any weird wording
or grammar.

Bibliography used for all the three parts:

Book: "Las grandes mentiras del futbol español" by Bernardo de
Salazar and Felix Martialay, mainly the chapter "Rojiblancos con
alas".

"Historia de la Liga española", by MARCA (1989).

Two Club Atletico de Madrid histories,one by AS and other by MARCA
published in the early 90's

"Historia del Centenario del Atletico de Madrid", by Bernardo de
Salazar, published by diario AS in 2003.

"Historia del Centenario del Real Madrid" written by Salazar too
and published by Diario AS (2001).

Testimonies of contemporary players' descendants. The names won't be
disclosed.

Atletico Aviacion crest

We are back today to debunk another accusation over Atletico Aviacion's
history, and thus, over Atletico de Madrid. Journalists with reputed
past, but null information, threw to the world the next lie: "In 1939 a
play-off was invented against Osasuna with the objective of promoting
Atletico Aviacion to Primera". Using different words, but the same
misinformation (and bad blood), Francisco Yagüe in 1990 mentioned this
on Diario 16 (TN: former Spanish generalist newspaper) in the article:
"Anniversaries to forget". Later, others extended his work, and some of
them went full idiots denouncing that: "To put Atletico Aviacion in
Primera, Oviedo were forced to renounce their spot".

After breathing for some minutes (it is hard to digest such a huge
avalanche of bullshit with no anesthetic), let's go, as always, with
the facts contrasted on the history books.

Before starting, I would like to thank Fernando Sanchez, Communications
Ph.D because of his thesis: "Sports documentary sources applied to the
history of a Spanish sports club: Club Atletido de Madrid History,
because of his help to contrast and increase my sources.

Aviacion Nacional Shirt | Atletico Aviacion Shirt (source)

As I said on the last chapter, Athletic Club (de Madrid) had been
relegated to Segunda Division in 1936, and that was the tier where
Atletico Aviacion were supposed to play. However, and to everyone's
surprise, Oviedo asked the Federation for a temporary absence because
their disastrous economical, social and sports situation, and to be
allowed to join the competition later. It is important to remember that
before the Civil War Oviedo were a team settled in Primera Division,
4th in the 1936 liga, and they had Isidro Langara, the greatest Spanish
pre-war player (max scorer in seasons 33/34, 34/35 and 35/36). After
the War, Oviedo had lost a large number of their players (the fight in
Asturias was specially bloody), Langara himself had fled out of Spain
with the Euzkadi team, and their Buenavista stadium was literally wrecked:
the tribune smashed (the wood had been used as firewood) and a big trench
divided the pitch in two. They had no means to resume their activity, and
thus, the Asturian team requested to be temporarily excluded from la Liga.

Oviedo's stadium after the War

The Spanish Federation, after Oviedo's absence, begin to plan the
calendar with an 11 teams league (one had to rest each week). However,
Club Atletico Osasuna claimed their right to play in Primera according
to an agreement from the Federation Directive Board on June 26th of 1938
where the Osasuna team was granted a spot in the first tier to thank the
services rendered by the Navarre people to the Nationalist Side during the
Civil War. This decision was endorsed by the Federation during the first
assembly held after the War. This is for those who talk about "Teams of
the Government". I wonder how are they going to tell this to the Indar
Gorri... (TN: Osasuna Ultras, left winged and Basque nationalists)

Of course, if this reason was enough to play in Primera, it was
understandable that several requests came from Coruña, Vigo and Ceuta
hoisting the Francoist flag: "I was fighting against the rojos too and
I deserve more than anybody to play in Primera".

Liga 1935/36 final table

However, those war merits were totally against the sport rules, because
after Oviedo's renounce, the team that had better results during the
last season was Athletic Club (de Madrid), second-to-last in Primera
Division in 1936, being Osasuna the last one, despite going to be
"promoted by arms".

Francisco Vives Camino, Athletic Aviacion president in 1939

The Aviator directors pulled their relevant influences in the Federation
claiming that they had more merits to play in Primera according to the
purely sports rules, and after several deliberations, it was decided that
the political candidate (Osasuna) and the sports candidate (Athletic) had
to settle the issue in a play-off match played on a neutral ground. This
"solomonic" decision raised great controversy, and not favoring Athletic
Aviacion, who were the ones making concessions to the non-football
interests, but favoring Osasuna, who appealed against the National
Council of Sports. Even some doubts were raised about the "Francoism"
of the Federation members that made the decision, and that is why the
ruling of the Council adds some odd final explanations:

"Unanimous judgment:

The executive commission, after a careful study of the quoted antecedents,
unanimously decides:

FIRST: Confirming the appealed agreement, the circumstantially vacant spot
in Primera Division de Liga de Clubs de Futbol shall be granted to the
team winning the match between CLUB ATLETICO OSASUNA and ATHLETIC-AVIACION
in Valencia the day 26 OF CURRENT MONTH

SECOND: The public campaign carried out by external elements with
objectives outside the sport is reprehensible and should be punished.

THIRD: The attacks to the Federacion Española de Futbol and their
members are totally slanderous and should be punished as the EXECUTIVE
COMMISSION totally endorse their honor and their total adhesion to the
glorious NATIONAL MOVEMENT"

In summary, the "invented promotion" (according to the undocumented)
favoring Athletic Aviacion, was actually a cession by the red and white
aviators of their legitimate sport right to favor Osasuna, whose merits
were reduced to their boldness fighting for Franco's troops. Neither
more nor less.

Play-off match line-up (source)

To complete the information, the play-off match was celebrated in Mestalla
the November 26th 1939 (TN: there is a typo in the original article)
with a 3-1 result favoring the Madrileños with two goals by Enrique and
one by Vazquez to complete the comeback after the goal by Vergara. It
was confirmed in the pitch what the politics have tried to take away:
Atletico Aviacion's sports right to play in the top Spanish tier.

Victor Hegelman
PS: The Federation kept Oviedo's spot and they were reincorporated to
Primera Division in season 1940-41, but that's another story

==== "The Regime's team" ====
self.atletico
History[History Time] The lies about Atletico Aviacion. Chapter 3:
submitted 1 year ago * by carpetanoSimeone
This is a TRANSLATION of the third and final article of the three written
by Victor Hegelman to debunk the common myths about Atletico Aviacion
(the team that existed from 1939 to 1946 after the fusion of Atletico
and Aviacion Nacional). You can read here the original article in
Spanish. The previous chapters of this series are below:
First Chapter: The birth of Atletico Aviacion
Second Chapter: Their right to play in Primera Division
The pictures aren't part of the original article. Some of them have been
taken from newspapers archive, others from online collectors catalogs
and the rest have been found online. The rights of the pictures belong
to their respective authors.
Once again, my English is limited, so please forgive any weird wording
or grammar.
Bibliography used for all the three parts:
Book: "Las grandes mentiras del futbol español" by Bernardo de
Salazar and Felix Martialay, mainly the chapter "Rojiblancos con
alas".
"Historia de la Liga española", by MARCA (1989).
Two Club Atletico de Madrid histories,one by AS and other by MARCA
published in the early 90's
"Historia del Centenario del Atletico de Madrid", by Bernardo de
Salazar, published by diario AS in 2003.
"Historia del Centenario del Real Madrid" written by Salazar too
and published by Diario AS (2001).
Testimonies of contemporary players' descendants. The names won't be
disclosed.
CHAPTER 3: "The Regime's Team
Picture 1

Athletic Aviacion players making the mandatory salute before a match

Many people comment or accuse directly Atletico Aviacion of being the
team supported by the Francoist Government, putting into question any
accomplishment achieved by Atletico during the Post-War, but lacking
any sourced argument. This is not just done by the undocumented Internet
guys that were quoted in the First Chapter of this series. Some alleged
historians (or "storians" as Bernardo de Salazar calls them), jump
without parachute to the malicious field of the suggestions. This way,
Carlos Fernandez Santander writes these deceiving and coward lines:
"Funny enough (or not), Liga and Copa were won that first year by two
teams of evident pro-regime significance: the semi-militarized Atletico
Aviacion (sic) that went from being relegated to Segunda Division to
Champion of Primera, and Español, representing the Spanish essences
in Catalonia". We can read even the reputed Duncan Shaw in a similar
fashion: "It is not surprising that Atletico Aviacion won the first
two ligas after the Civil War; perhaps it is more surprising that the
official aid was not enough to let them win more trophies before regaining
their independence and original name in 1946". That is, suggestions,
reflections, veiled attacks with no proofs: just gut feelings.

We are going to check the history (something that neither the
"storians" nor the plain liars had the decency to do) and we are
going to see the extent of those presumed advantages for Atletico that
would make them look like a sort of "Iberian Steaua from the 40s".

Again, I sincerely thank Fernando Sanchez because of his selfless
collaboration to write this article.

Picture 2

April 29th 1940. Mundo Deportivo illustrate the result of season 1939/40:

"I warned you that this chair (silla) wasn't for Sevilla"

The truth is that Atletico Aviacion were nicknamed "The team of the
millionaires" during the early 40's (vouched by the great fullback
Aparicio), although it was not because they kept millions in the bank. The
participation in the board by the Air Force granted them some privileges,
like the unlimited use of vehicles and gasoline in their trips, and the
right to choose any player serving in the Air Force, with a first option
over those in the Land Army. Also, like many other entities dependant of
the Army, they received a subsidy from the General-Minister Yagüe. Anyway
they were not the only Spanish football team receiving state aid during
the 40s, but that is another issue.

There is no doubt that the hands given to the Aviators were interesting,
especially during a time when Spain was in ruins. In fact, the advantage
of traveling on military vehicles was not petty if you look at the
conditions suffered by other teams during their travels (many on
regular trains, and not in Business Class precisely), who had it way
more difficult.

Picture 3

Marca cover: Atletico Aviacion 3, Deportivo la Coruña 1

Well, Atleti were not rich, but indeed "economically
viable". Rhetorical question: Was that enough to consider that they
won two Ligas thanks to the Fascist Power? Let us continue. It is
also said that the Aviator team had influence to pull strings at the
Federacion. Once discarded any kind of benefit to access the top tier
(see the previous chapter about the right to play in Primera), there is
only one instance where, although favorable treatment is not proved,
the red and white team shows some weigh when it comes to get official
support for their interests. I am talking about the transfer from the
Cantabrian player German from Racing to Athletic Aviacion after the
War. The intense efforts by the red and white executive Cesareo Galindez
counted on the priceless Castilian Football Federation mediation. Just
that. They defended one of their clubs' interests against those of a
club that was under another regional federation (TN: teams from Madrid
were affiliated to the Castilian Federation, Racing de Santander was
affiliated to the Cantabrian Federation). Following the law, and without
urgently adapting or changing rules to allow transfers. I am talking
about Kubala to Barcelona and Di Stefano to Real Madrid cases (that
was really pulling strings...). Let us go on.

Picture 4

Works to replant the grass in Vallecas

I wonder: if Athletic Aviacion were the Government's team, how can
you explain their struggle to have their own field after the War? I
mean, the Metropolitano was wrecked, so Athletic had the option of
playing at Vallecas. However, the Vallecano field, according to Salazar,
had no grass, so it was not allowed to host Primera Division matches
according to the federative rules. It was necessary to replant the grass,
and that provoked than the Aviators' local stadium was not available
until the last match of the league (TN: there were no "grass rolls"
back then. They have to plant the seeds and let them grow). Notice that
that was their second option because the Metropolitano was being slowly
rebuilt by their slacking owners and took longer to be available.

Picture 5

December 10th, 1939. First match for Athletic Aviacion as locals...at
Chamartin

In this situation, the red and whites had to ask their neighbour Madrid
CF to cede their Chamartin stadium for the Atletico local matches
(TN: The "Chamartin stadium" was later named "Santiago Bernabeu",
yes, Athletic Aviacion had to play at Santiago Bernabeu). The Whites
accepted, but with one condition: their members (TN: Socios) were
allowed to attend the Athletic Aviacion matches for free. For the whole
season, Athletic Aviacion players suffered the rages and jeers from
the Madridista fans, who noisily cheered the Colchonero opponents every
Sunday. Whoever they were. The situation sometimes reached the point of
confrontation between the Aviacion players (supposedly home players)
and the Merengue public, and this provoked that the very upset players
were punished (e.g Elicegui and Blanco were fined 100 pesetas after
the match against Betis at Chamartin because of their obscene gestures
to the hostile "local" crowd). The hostile atmosphere suffered by
Athletic (Atletico months later) during their "local" games was so
obvious that the Castilian Federation condemned the situation (no fines
or suspensions, of course). This is an extract from one of their notes:
"This passion to cheer a third team when their triumph does not benefit
neither directly nor indirectly our team and the hostility to the home
team to exclusively benefit the guest team infers a great harm to the
regional [Castilian] football".

Picture 6

ABC Newspaper, December 17th 1939, report about the fines to Elicegui
and Blanco

I wonder again: things did not look too easy, despite they were the
Francoist Government team, did they?

Another isolated episodes neither confirm the "Government team"
theory. I am talking about the dark and surprising imprisonment of their
coach Ricardo Zamora on year 1940 because he had left Spain through
the "Red Zone" longer than the allowed time during the War (two
months). That is the official version. The informal version, published
by some contemporary newspapers, was that he was imprisoned "because
he was red" (TN: "un rojo"), or more clearly because he was the
friend of a red, that was the same during those years. Zamora even had
to gave up his coach position for several weeks.

It is surprising how in this case the Francoist Government acted with
iron fist and dubious justice against their "presumed team".

Picture 7

Marca cover. Ricardo Zamora, Aviacion coach, celebrating Arencibia's
goal against Madrid

And what were the benefits on the pitch? As I say, there are many
unsourced comments about the supposed support that helped Atletico
Aviacion to win two ligas. The truth is that both were won, as Maradona
would say "shitting", suffering according to the history. Even in
the first one the players finished their last match thinking that the
tournament had been won by Sevilla, who were playing in Alicante with
a favourable score. Some minutes later, a phone call confirmed, for
the players' surprise and joy, that Hercules had finally tied the
match against Sevilla, giving Atletico the title. Next year Atletico
won again at the last match, although this time they did not depend on
other matches. Too much suspense in my opinion, considering that the
Ligas had been "assigned beforehand"...

Picture 8

Marca cover: Atletico Aviacion 5 - Real Santander (i.e. Racing) 0

Then, if the Francoist bigwigs were the ones granting the titles,
why did the Aviators not also win the Copas del Generalisimo (TN:
Francoist "Copa del Rey") and the next ligas for the bigger glory
of the "National Movement"? The truth is that Atletico did not
win any title more as "de Aviacion", and the four next ligas were
won by Valencia, Atletico de Bilbao (TN: Remember: foreign names were
already banned), Barcelona and Sevilla. Were they Fascist too, or these
teams won right and square? Even in these years there were two seasons
(1942/43 and 1945/46) where Atleti sweated blood to stay far from the
relegation. I was told that they were winning by decree.

Picture 9

Marca cover: At. Aviacion 5 - Alicante 1

Well, a lot of nonsense has been said about Atletico Aviacion, and
most of it with no sources, following the Spanish saying: "if you
slander something will remain" (TN: "Difama, que algo queda").

Then, why did Atletico won the two leagues following the Civil War? I
quote the words by Francisco Vives, first president of Athletic Aviacion
regarding this issue:

Picture 10

Marca cover: Athletic Aviacion champion of la Liga 1939/40

"Athletic Aviacion were easy to manage because their players were from
the military or assimilated, so there was no place for discussion and the
discipline was a natural part of their daily duties. The merge connected
the Air Force and Atletico de Madrid in a way that the first Atletico
Aviacion stars would be German, Vazquez, Campos, Aparicio, Arencibia...
that had been Air Force soldiers. In the same way, contemporary official
documents prove that the Air Force officials publicized Atletico
Aviacion among the troops under their command, so those who voluntary
wanted to help the development of the sport could became members of a
club working under the Air Force patronage[...] The team traveled on Air
Force buses. Everything was done right, and the results were perfect".

Picture 11

Ricardo Zamora during an Atletico Aviacion training session

Neither a single report nor proof of max-fixing, steals or another
dishonest behavior favoring the Aviators. In this series of articles
there is a summary of the facts. Now people can lie or make up facts,
or they can read and document themselves.

-Victor Hegelman.

To add on this, here is the article that ABC (pro-regime newspaper) wrote
after Athletic Aviacion won la Liga (in Spanish). Notice that there is
no mention how cool is for Franco, the Regime or "the National Movement"
that Atletico Aviacion had won (it would have been a good chance to do
so if they were actually Franco's team). They say that Aviacion were
the most consistent team during the season and that they have better
squad depth that the rest of teams.