A Basque team and a Catalan team confronting each other to win the "King's Cup"; the irony of the two Spanish peoples with the strongest nationalist/separatist sentiment playing to win a symbol of the Spanish monarchy, in the presence of the King and Queen no less, was not lost upon most. But football trumps politics, though a plan was launched among Basque and Catalan spectators to express their dislike of the Spanish state by whislting when the national anthem was played before the match.
But one of the stations broadcasting the match was the Spanish state-run TV station, rTVe. Mysteriously, before the game, viewers didn't see the national anthem being sung; they cut to a reporter live in Bilbao talking about the ambience in the stadium. And then, the video footage of the players standing at attention for the anthem was played at half time, without the sound. Here's a video that shows what viewers saw on different TV channels. ETB1 ( a Basque channel), TV3 ( a Catalan channel), and TVE.
The public cried Scandal! Conspiracy! TeleEspaña claimed it was human error, that they weren't trying to hide anything, and but their director of Sports programming still ended up resigning.
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