A Spanish newlywed couple, Dani Cuesta and Mireia Sáez, had their passports seized in Singapore in October 2024 after posing with a ‘Lim Go Home’ banner protesting Valencia CF owner Peter Lim. Valencia and LaLiga said they were in contact with the Spanish embassy in Singapore to help the couple return home.
Peter Lim, the Singapore billionaire known as the ‘Remisier King’ for his stockbroking career, bought Valencia through his company Meriton Holdings in 2014, initially hailed as a saviour for the indebted Spanish club. A decade of player sales, managerial churn and declining results turned much of the fan base against him, and ‘Lim Go Home’ — in Valencian-inflected protest language — became the movement's slogan, displayed at the Mestalla and wherever Lim's interests could be reached.
Cuesta and Sáez brought that protest on their honeymoon. According to reporting at the time, they photographed themselves with the banner outside Lim's Singapore residence, put protest stickers on lampposts around the city and spoke to a Valencia fan podcast about their morning of activism. What is lawful, even celebrated, fan behaviour in Spain collided immediately with Singapore's legal order, where public assemblies — even by one person — require a permit outside the narrow space of Speakers' Corner.
The couple were stopped, questioned and had their passports impounded while police investigated, leaving them stranded in Singapore beyond their honeymoon. Valencia's mayor publicly described them as detained at the airport, fan group Libertad VCF accused Singapore of violating their freedom of movement for peaceful expression, and the club issued a statement expressing its wish for the best and fastest outcome while confirming contact, alongside LaLiga, with the Spanish embassy, which was advising and assisting the pair.
The diplomatic choreography was delicate. Valencia could hardly endorse an illegal protest in its owner's home country, yet its supporters overwhelmingly sympathised with the protesters, and the club depends on those supporters. Lim himself, famously private in Singapore despite his prominence in Spanish football arguments, made no public comment, leaving Singapore's police process and Spain's consular process to grind against each other in public view.
For Singaporeans, the case was a familiar illustration of a rule visitors often discover too late: expression that is routine in Europe can be an offence in Singapore if it becomes an unauthorised assembly, and immigration consequences follow automatically once an investigation opens. For Spanish fans, the impounded passports became proof, fairly or not, that Lim's wealth could reach into the machinery of a foreign state to punish dissent — a narrative the authorities rejected, pointing to neutral enforcement of assembly law.
The couple eventually became a symbol larger than their banner. Their honeymoon photograph is now a standard illustration in stories about Lim's Valencia reign, about Singapore's assembly laws and about the globalisation of football protest, in which a slogan born in a Spanish stadium can strand two tourists on the other side of the world.