By: EFE Updated 17 Jan 2022, 18: 54 pm EST
The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, stressed this Monday in view of the controversy over the expulsion of Australia of the tennis player Novak Djokovic that the rules are to be followed, and assured that if he wants to compete in Spain he must comply with the that are in force in the country.
Sánchez referred to this controversy in the press conference he offered in Madrid together with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, visiting the Spanish capital.
“If those are the regulations that the Australian Government has approved, they have to be fulfilled. Absolute respect and support for the decisions that have been made “, added the Spanish president before the expulsion of the Serbian tennis player of that country.
When reminded by the press the words of the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, in which he stated that “it would be a great claim ” that Djokovic could play in the Mutua Madrid Open, Sánchez specified that it will be the Spanish Government that will have to determine if he complies with the regulations, and insisted: “Without the intention of polemicizing, the same thing: the sanitary regulations are to be complied with”.
After remembering the words of the tennis player Rafael Nadal in which, in the face of this controversy, he emphasized the suffering that the pandemic is causing in the population , the head of the Spanish Government reiterated that “any person, called one way or another, has the trade they have and is a high-level athlete level or not, they have to comply with the health regulations of the country”.
And that is what Sánchez guaranteed that any athlete who aspires to compete in Spain will do, “comply with the health regulations of Spain”.
For his part, the German chancellor stressed that each country sets its own rules in the face of the pandemic to protect the health of citizens and that they must be respected.
“It doesn’t matter who it is,” stressed Scholz, to emphasize that Australia has rules that are not, for example, those of Germany, but that it dictates them using its sovereignty and that they must apply to everyone those who enter the country.
Next, he took the opportunity to make an appeal: “Please, get vaccinated; having the booster shot is the best thing you can do for yourself and your loved ones“.