Italy’s ambassador to Madrid has publicly admonished a Spanish basketball club for accepting sponsorship from a restaurant chain called The Mafia Sits at the Table, saying the name trivialises organised crime and the human and economic damage it inflicts.
The ambassador, Giuseppe Buccino Grimaldi, made his “discomfort” and “confusion” plain in an open letter to the president of the Casademont Zaragoza club posted on the embassy website on Monday.
“First and foremost, the mafia represents a criminal phenomenon,” he wrote. “The fight against it has required considerable effort and numerous resources – not just from the Italian government but on an EU scale, given the serious threat that organised crime poses to security, to the legal economy and to coexistence.”
Given all that, Grimaldi added, “associating the mafia with concepts of friendliness and relaxation – based on the notion of the mafia ‘sitting at the table’ to share a meal – contributes to the trivialisation of the organisation’s illegal and villainous activities”.
As if that weren’t bad enough, continued the ambassador, the image of the mafia sitting at the table also constituted an affront to the culture of the Mediterranean diet, “which is shared by Italy and Spain and in which meals are important moments for social exchange and personal growth”.
He concluded: “Treating this brand and its association with sport as if it were quite normal is not something that would pass unnoticed, and is something that would cause unease to any Italian – even in a country as close and beloved as Spain – and which would indeed bother many people, regardless of their nationality.”
It was not the first time Italy has signalled its anger over the issue. Grimaldi also mentioned that the general court of the European Union had previously upheld a decision by the EU Intellectual Property Office after the Italian government had complained that the name of the chain was “contrary to public policy and to accepted principles of morality”.
“The general court emphasises that the word element ‘la mafia’ is the dominant element of the Spanish company’s mark and is understood worldwide as referring to a criminal organisation that resorts, inter alia, to intimidation, physical violence and murder in carrying out its activities, which include drug and arms trafficking, money laundering and corruption,” the court said in a 2018 ruling.
As the name The Mafia Sits at the Table conveyed a “globally positive image” of the mafia, it added, the brand “is therefore likely to shock or offend not only the victims of that criminal organisation and their families, but also any person who, on EU territory, encounters that mark and has average sensitivity and tolerance thresholds, and must therefore be declared invalid”.
At the time, the chain, which has dozens of restaurants across Spain, said it did not agree with the court’s decision, nor with the complaint that had triggered it.
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“The Mafia Sits at the Table brand is rooted in the admiration its founders have for Italian-Mediterranean food and for the copious amount of cinematic and literary material that exists in relation to the mafia across the world – especially the Godfather trilogy and its relationship with food,” it said. “At no time have we tried to promote or justify any associations with violent or criminal organisations.”
It also said that the use of the word “mafia” abounded in children’s video games, books, films and the music of international groups.
The Guardian has approached the restaurant chain and Casademont Zaragoza for comment. A spokesperson for the club told El País that it had not received a copy of the letter and would not be making any statement. They did, however, note that the chain sponsored other clubs and that “there are video games and streets in Italy that are named after the mafia”.
