Eric Cantona remembers his republican Spanish grandfather ahead of elections in France: “They will not pass”

It is quite possible that the non-football public knows Eric Cantona more for kicking an ultra than for his sporting achievements. The Frenchman stood for both things, but years after that flying kick – at a hooligan who was shouting xenophobic insults at him -, Cantona admitted it was his greatest achievement: “I’ve had great moments in my career, but the best was when I kicked that fascist.” Today, retired at the age of 58, Eric Cantona is positioning himself against fascism.

This Wednesday, just three days before the second round of voting in the legislative election in France, in which Marine Le Pen’s far right is firing, Cantona has once again made his political position clear. And he did so by remembering his grandfather, a Spanish Republican who fought against Francoism, as Cantona himself has already pointed out several times.

“As my grandfather Pedro, a Spanish Republican who fought against fascism, said: ‘They shall not pass.’ I would rather die standing than kneeling.’ I have forgotten nothing of my history,” Cantona wrote in a post on Instagram, in which he repeated the famous motto of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.

“No pass!” (said in Spanish) is one of the slogans that is being repeated the most by French protesters who are taking to the streets these days to protest the rise of the extreme right, after the National Rally, Marine Le Pen’s party, withdrew for the first time in the legislative elections last Sunday. This coming Sunday, the French are called to vote in a second round, in which several of the lowest-voted candidates of the left-wing Popular Front and Macronism have withdrawn in order to unify votes against the extreme right.

Cantona is part of a remarkable list of French public figures – among others, Nobel Prize winner in literature Annie Ernaux or footballers like Kylian Mbappe – who have spoken out against the extreme right and its potential rise to power in these elections.

In fact, the former footballer has never missed an opportunity to remember his origins and reaffirm his defense of anti-fascism. “My maternal grandfather was from Barcelona and fought against Franco. At the end of the war, he was wanted and had only minutes to flee before the city was besieged by the Nationalists. He went looking for his girlfriend and asked her if she would follow him. She accepted. That was my grandmother… They arrived on foot in a refugee camp in Argelès-sur-Mer,” he said several years ago to explain, ”that fascist had been kicked out.” Cantona then added, “I come from a family of immigrants and rebels, soldiers and workers, I am what I am because of my roots.”