The head of Spain's refereeing body, Luis Medina Cantalejo, has hit back at Real Madrid's accusations of "manipulation and adulteration" of the competition by officials, insisting that "my colleagues and I are not corrupt."
Madrid's board sent an open letter to the Spanish football federation (RFEF) and Spain's Sports Ministry (CSD) on Monday, furious at the referee's handling of the league leader's 1-0 defeat at Espanyol last weekend.
The letter highlighted referee Alejandro Muñiz Ruiz's failure to send off Espanyol defender Carlos Romero -- who later scored the winning goal -- for a foul on Kylian Mbappé, as well as an earlier disallowed goal from Vinícius Júnior, and asked the RFEF to release audio recordings of conversations between Muñiz and video assistant referee Javier Iglesias Villanueva.
"The events that occurred in this match exceeded any margin for human error or refereeing interpretation," Madrid's board said, arguing that the game "represents the culmination of a completely discredited refereeing system," and calling for "structural reform."
"We don't get into wars of words with teams. I don't want to add more fuel to the fire," Luis Medina Cantalejo, head of Spain's Technical Committee of Referees (CTA), said in an extract from an interview with journalist Josep Pedrerol, to be released in full on Thursday.
"I don't have to be ashamed of anything. My colleagues and I are not corrupt. We might be really clumsy, or really bad, but corrupt? No ... I don't like people saying that we're corrupt. I have to go to work every day, because we have no choice, the competition continues. But I don't like it. Referees are honourable. Despite all the letters, statements, no referee goes to a stadium with the idea of hurting anybody."
Real Madrid have repeatedly complained about refereeing standards and decisions in Spain, with the club's TV channel highlighting errors from officials, and president Florentino Pérez calling for the Spanish government to intervene on the issue.
Those complaints have increased following revelations in the Negreira case, an ongoing criminal investigation into payments made by rivals Barcelona to former CTA vice-president José María Enríquez Negreira.
New RFEF president Rafael Louzan claimed last week that Pérez had told him he'd like to bring English referees to Spain, to improve the qualify of officiating.
Also on Wednesday former Barcelona and Spain national team star Gerard Piqué, said Real Madrid's tactic of blaming the refs was just done to draw attention away from their poor play.
"[Real Madrid]'s letter is just a smokescreen in the truest sense of the word because they have been doing this for 120 years," Piqué said during a promotional event for the league. "When they lose they find something else [for everyone] to talk about, because that is what they want. Complaints about officiating are always going to exist and this is what Madrid have always done, they get everyone fired up about something else when things are not going their way. We are used to it."