The assembly of I stew it, I eat it, by Joan Josep Pallàs

For years now, the successive directors of FC Barcelona have been busy discrediting the members’ assembly, undermining its supposed representativeness with each edition, doing everything they could to bring it closer to their interests and canceling any suggestion of democratic debate.

Joan Laporta and his board have done nothing more than follow that undisguised path towards autarky, minimizing the role of the delegates to the point of achieving their insignificance, leaving the assembly as a mere folkloric day in which a sad reality is staged, before in person and today telematics, which consists of evidencing the disconnection between those who rule and those who pay, feigning an associative ownership model that is at least moribund.

If anything, this board must be credited with elevating the difference between what it says and what it does to the point of parody. It was curious to hear Laporta at the beginning of his speech state that the commitment to the telematic model, when the pandemic that caused it is over, makes the assembly “more sustainable and universal.” Previously, spokesperson Cubells had already been in charge of highlighting the low incidence of the carbon footprint, delving into what undoubtedly worries the majority of society the most. The carbon footprint.

In case at home the little more than 800 delegates connected at the beginning had doubts about whether to continue the assembly or not, Cubells managed to mix in a couple of minutes expressions such as “pin number” and “form” with the allusion to a couple of articles of the statutes, a ceremony of confusion that invited you to turn everything off and go out for churros, feeling nostalgic about voting yes or no by raising your hand with a little sign, as simple as it was. Immediately afterwards, what I call the funeral effect was activated, consisting of focusing on a veteran audience dressed in dark tones and asking for a minute of silence for the members who have left us this year.

After Laporta’s speech, which especially in the economic section underestimated the intelligence of those who could listen to him, attributing “great courage” to his board for having recognized million-dollar losses, also using a paternalistic tone that is only effective if one is convinced of house, intervened Ferran Olivé, a competent manager with soft manners who it was decided to bring to light to talk about numbers with graphs that always dress. In the end, whether or not to believe in what he defended required an act of faith, especially when, when faced with a question from a partner, he confessed that his favorite series is “The one that is coming.” It was tempting (and mischievous, it must be admitted) to interpret the reference as a metaphor for where the club is going financially.

A separate chapter deserves the supposedly timely (for the board) intervention of the economist Xavier Sala Martín, a great friend of Laporta, who enjoyed a curiously long and propagandistic telematic shift in which he did not ask anything (for that the delegates were given their turn, who had politely complied with that precept), he relativized the role of the auditors to the point of “irrelevance”, and expressed his opinion with that instructive sufficiency that his admirers enjoy so much and that is so unbearable for his detractors. He scolded, as he usually does, those who disagreed with his opinion and even pointed out that the partners were partly to blame for the losses for not going to Montjuïc. Sala Martín actually explained the same thing as Olivé, but Olivé was, basically, more of a person.

The surviving delegates (634 voted, a microscopic percentage of the club’s total members, as always in recent years) gave the green light to the board’s numbers as expected.

Once the obstacle has been overcome, it is up to the partners to move on with their lives, either enthusiastic about Laporta, or accepting his postulates with a pinch of salt or, as it seems in most cases, living with their backs to assemblies. and other performances that do not distract them from what really matters to them: this week Sevilla and Bayern come to Montjuïc and on Sunday the classic plays at the Bernabéu. The fan is once again excited about Flick’s Barça, who is grateful for being more Olivé than Sala Martín, and the rest, whether a drama or not, doesn’t matter. If it has come this far, it is because the partner has left.