Real Madrid have failed in a court challenge to block the sale of a version of the club's shirt based on how it looked during Spain's short-lived 1930s republic.
The white shirt, developed by independent design house 198 Clothing and Music, features the Madrid badge as it was from 1931 until the end of the Spanish civil war in 1939, a period when the word Real (Royal) did not feature in the club name nor the royal crown appear on its official kit.
When the shirt was first put on sale in May 2016, Madrid's current hierarchy filed a legal challenge, claiming to the court that the product was "a fiction which tries to spread republican values."
Spanish police raided the company's premises and seized all the jerseys they could find, while the club's lawyers called for the producers to be tried for breaking commercial law -- an offence which carries a potential prison sentence of six months to four years.
However, magistrate Caridad Hernandez Garcia, of the Audiencia Provincial de Madrid, has ruled that the football club could not stop the company from selling the shirt, saying: "There is no risk of confusion between the shirts and the official products of the Real Madrid brand."
A lawyer for 198 Clothing and Music told AS that Madrid's legal team had aimed to limit freedom of expression and were unable to show how the "republican" jersey would damage their revenues.
"They took a disproportionate measure -- Madrid's reaction was more against the freedom of expression than protecting their intellectual property," Gonzalo Carrasco. "Madrid were not able to show the commercial damage that this would do to them."
198 Clothing and Music's new sales pitch for the shirt plays on the "values" and señorío (gentlemanly quality), which Blancos president Florentino Perez often talks about being so important to his club.
Sí, CULPABLES: Hemos vuelto a crear una camiseta que fue prohibida antes de nacer y ha vencido al Real Madrid #GOL https://t.co/BQjmipBML4 pic.twitter.com/GCOjeuNZ8l
- 198 CLOTHING & MUSIC (@198_es) May 4, 2017
The design house tweeted this message: "Yes, GUILTY: we have created another jersey which was banned before it was born and have beaten Real Madrid. The shirt of this football team from Madrid which has warrior courage, which has señorío, which remains white and clean, which pays its taxes in Spain, which is for clean play, which does not do property speculation, which loves sport and not business, and for which values are more important than money."