Antonio Salas, as he called himself, certainly did not look
like a skinhead member of Real Madrid's "official" group of
violent neo-Nazi supporters, the feared Ultrasur. But then
Antonio, an investigative reporter, had recently changed his
disguise so the group's members could not track him down and
fulfil their pledge to kill him.
Antonio spent last year infiltrating the most radical
section of the Ultrasur. He came out to accuse the self-
proclaimed "world's greatest club", nine times champion of
Europe, of harbouring and, in effect, promoting neo-Nazi,
racist violence.
Antonio had made his first contact with the Ultrasur at El
Refugio, a bar beside the stadium where the hard core gather
after matches to organise "cacerias", or hunts, of blacks,
prostitutes, tramps, gays and supporters of other clubs.
Ultrasur leaders, handed free passes by the club, have long
police records. The organisation's number two, a middle-
class lawyer called Alvaro Cadenas, was last week jailed for
four years for stabbing a policeman. The leader, Jose Luis
Ochaita, was banned from entering football grounds for three
years in 1998 after allegedly waving a knife at a player
from a rival club.
The night before Antonio and I met, I had stood outside El
Refugio, amid the broken glass from what the skins call "a
shower of stars", otherwise known as pelting the police with
beer bottles. Half a dozen people had been hurt. But all
that had happened before the game. Real Madrid had won,
beating Milan 3-1, and the thugs were in good humour.