Elam on Monday slammed a football training camp for youths organised in the north of the island by Spanish club FC Barcelona, with the party especially outraged with the term ‘northern Cyprus’ featuring on the club’s official website.

Dubbed ‘Lefkosa Camp’, the event will take place from September 7 to 11, and then from September 16 to 20.

The FC Barcelona website states the location of the camp as “Near East University, Lefkosa, Northern Cyprus.”

Elam called “inconceivable” the holding of sports activities in the north by foreign organisations, “let alone a club with a major football academy from an EU member-state”.

The party called on the Spanish government to step in and cancel the training camp. It also urged the Cypriot foreign ministry to take the necessary action to prevent the event happening.

In its statement, Elam also took credit for the recent cancellation of an electronic music festival that was planned at Kyrenia castle.

FC Barcelona has courted controversy before, when in 2014 its then former president Joan Laporta visited the north where he met local officials and compared the political status of Catalonia to the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’.

At the time Laporta had suggested a football match between Catalonia and a team from the north. The proposed match never took place.

Laporta, a lawyer, met with the then ‘deputy prime minister’ of the north Serdar Denktash and with Hasan Sertoglu, head of the Turkish Cypriot football federation.

During a news conference held in Kyrenia with Denktash and Laporta, the former announced a tourism promotion deal for the north concluded between the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’ and Fashion TV. The TV channel were clients of Laporta’s law firm.

Laporta served as president of FC Barcelona between 2003 and 2010, and from 2021 onwards.