After being expelled from Montjuïc for not paying the 21,000 euro penalty corresponding to the fines accumulated for various incidents last season, the cheering stands were left empty for the Champions League match against Brest. And the 572 members that make up it agreed to stay at home and not protest.
But the conflict is far from being resolved. And yesterday, for the match against Las Palmas, a hundred members demonstrated before the match around the Lluís Companys stadium. The participants in the protest displayed a banner with the motto “Save the Stand” and chanted to be allowed to return to the area behind the cauldron goal. Unlike what happened in the Champions League against Brest, Barça did occupy those seats with invitations to Barcelona supporters.
Fans from the cheering stands protest at the stadium gates
The protests from the stands will get worse. This was announced this Sunday in a statement by the four animation groups Almogàvers, Front 532, Nostra Ensenya and Supporters Barça. They will take action.
The statement from the stands
“After decades supporting the team at its best and, above all, at its worst, at home and away, we have been deprived of celebrating and enjoying our 125th anniversary. This is not about economic sanctions that we do not want to pay, there is much more to it. Little by little the partner is losing the weight that he has always had historically, which corresponds to him. The little communication and the total lack of interest in the EDA, proposals rejected without any argument, seeing how the usual reselling is still allowed, denaturalizing the stands of football atmosphere by filling the stadium with tourists, waves with a zero tie, changing the historical colors of the club for pure marketing, decision making without transparency and without consulting the member, persecution of any type of animation and contrary speech, prioritizing the spectacle without room for sentimental and family roots… Infinite reasons that reveal the intentions of this board board, prioritize a business model where the social mass closest and most loyal to the club is greatly affected. They are selling the club economically and socially. The closure of our area, of the voice of the stadium, is one more step in the social death of the club. Either we react or they will end up destroying the most important thing we have.The dignity of the institution is not to be played with. With the history of the club, neither. With the value of the shield and the feelings of the members and fans, even less. We will fight for our rights as partners, like anyone else. “It is in our hands.”
The origin of the conflict
It was last October 29 when the board chaired by Joan Laporta issued an ultimatum to the animation groups. According to club sources, they had entered into an escalation of bad behavior. Through four letters to each of the affected clubs, they were urged to pay the global amount of 21,000 euros, corresponding to the fines accumulated for various incidents during last season.
Specifically, there are 14 games in which the club has been sanctioned for bad behavior. The presidents of the four clubs held conversations with the club’s social area until the last moment. Trying to negotiate a meeting without prior payment of the penalty. It was not possible.
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The board supports its drastic decision on the fact that there is a prior document signed by both parties that specified that, in the event of any sanction for bad behavior, those responsible should be held accountable. Something with which the 572 members are not satisfied, who defend that the club included this point without prior notice and who consider that the club has tools to try to individually expel people who do not comply with the rules without criminalizing the entire group. Laporta, who in his previous mandate already played against the Boixos Nois in 2003, does not see it the same way. Consider that everyone is responsible for what happens in the north goal.
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