{"id":37481,"date":"2026-06-09T15:28:46","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T15:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/37481\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T15:28:46","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T15:28:46","slug":"pope-leo-xiv-gets-caught-up-in-spains-culture-wars-over-soccer-and-language-national-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/37481\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Leo XIV gets caught up in Spain’s culture wars over soccer and language | National News"},"content":{"rendered":"

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) \u2014 Pope Leo XIV<\/a> found himself in the midst of Spain\u2019s two classic culture wars as he landed in Barcelona on Tuesday during his weeklong visit<\/a> to the country.<\/p>\n

The U.S.-born pontiff had rubbed Barcelona\u2019s soccer fans the wrong way by saying he roots for Real Madrid instead of their beloved Bar\u00e7a. Barcelona\u2019s residents had already been speculating that he might make minimal use of their native Catalan during his trip to Barcelona<\/a> instead of Spanish, which he speaks fluently.<\/p>\n

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\n <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BARCELONA, Spain (AP) \u2014 Pope Leo XIV found himself in the midst of Spain\u2019s two classic culture wars…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9948,1220,984,17885,1010,1743,17,396,394],"class_list":["post-37481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-catholic-church","tag-general-news","tag-language","tag-pope-leo-spain-barcelona-real-madrid-catalan","tag-religion","tag-soccer","tag-spain","tag-sports","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}