The Diplomat
Italy’s ambassador to Spain, Giuseppe Buccino Grimaldi, has lamented the decision of the Casademont Zaragoza basketball team to sign a collaboration agreement with the restaurant chain La Mafia se sienta a la mesa (La Mafia sits at the table), a brand “offensive to the victims of this criminal organization and their families.”
Last February, the basketball club and the restaurant chain announced in a press release the collaboration and sponsorship agreement between Casademont Zaragoza and “an Italian-Mediterranean restaurant brand” that represents “a reference and faithful importer of Italian gastronomy in Spain” and that thus becomes “part of the Basket Zaragoza Business Club family”.
La Mafia se sienta a la mesa was born in 2000 in Zaragoza and is part of the LMssLM business group. It currently has fifty establishments in the peninsula, specializing in Italian cuisine and with an atmosphere inspired by famous real and fictional characters of the Italian mafia, such as Al Capone or Vito Corleone.
In an open letter to the president of Casademont Zaragoza, Reynaldo Benito, Ambassador Grimaldi, who took office three months ago, assures that the news of the agreement has “disturbed” him because “the Mafia represents a criminal phenomenon” and poses “a serious threat to security, the legal economy and coexistence”. He also recalls that “numerous efforts and substantial resources” have been devoted to fight the Mafia “not only by the Italian government, but also at the level of the European Union”.
For this reason, he warns that “associating the Mafia with concepts of cordiality and relaxation”, such as “sitting around the table” to “share a meal”, contributes “to the trivialization of the illicit activities and misdeeds committed by that organization, which go against the fundamental values of the European Union, such as respect for human dignity and freedom”.
Buccino Grimaldi also recalls that both the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), based in Alicante, and the EU Court have warned that “this trademark is contrary to public order and offensive, not only for the victims of this criminal organization and their families, but for any person who, in the territory of the Union, finds himself before such trademark and possesses average thresholds of sensitivity and tolerance.”
“This brand and its association with sport, as if it were something normal, are then something that does not go unnoticed and that causes in any Italian a feeling of unease, even if it is in a country as beloved and close as Spain, and that affects many more people regardless of their nationality”, concludes the ambassador’s letter.
