What will the Majestic hotel on Passeig de Gràcia have to host these prodigies? In 1996, José María Aznar, leader of the Popular Party, and Jordi Pujol, his counterpart in Convergència i Unió, shook hands and sealed an agreement according to which the Catalan party would support the investiture (sound familiar?) to change of certain competencies. On Tuesday night, the same establishment witnessed an unusual scene: Joan Laporta, Josep Maria Bartomeu, Sandro Rosell, Enric Reyna and Joan Gaspart, the last five presidents of FC Barcelona, ??put aside their differences and had dinner together to “cohesize Barcelonaism” due to “the attacks” the club is suffering, which “have recently increased”.
The impact of the club’s statement, which revealed the meeting to the media, was undeniable. A photograph that was not disseminated would have helped to further increase its impact. The note, however, did not make any explicit reference to the Negreira case, although everyone who follows Barça news at least knows that without this variant the meeting would not have happened. Here is the question to formulate once the dazzling first impression is overcome. With three of the diners investigated by order of Judge Aguirre, we have to wonder if we are facing a united defense of Barcelona against the evil foreign enemy or if it is a work meeting to unify a judicial strategy for the future, disguised as something else ?
Let’s remember that the participants of the meeting, whose authorship has already been claimed by Joan Gaspart, have had 20 years, in short, to approximate their positions. Perhaps they would have been spared (and spared us) an infinite number of guerillas and creations of antagonistic factions that have worn the club down considerably.
The meeting, according to those present, was friendly, as it can be when the people who sit there have stuck more knives than a hyperactive fakir, and lasted more than two hours. The Negreira case was discussed, obviously, even if sources who despise the intelligence of their receivers deny it; it is true that this theme was not the predominant one. There was more general talk about what Laporta has recently dubbed “sociological Madridism”, in which Sandro Rosell can be seen as damaged by the long period he spent in pre-trial detention without reason. Laporta and Rosell, by the way, made a point and aside after Commissioner Villarejo accused RAC1 of the former of giving information to facilitate the arrest of the latter. The following reflection was repeated at the table: “It’s not just Negreira, the issue is the systematic and historic attack against our club”.
The five presidents agreed that they would continue to meet. Gaspart told Jijantes that the lunches will be made and paid for from oldest to youngest, that is to say, he paid for the first one. Beyond the anecdote, it will be necessary to see if this understanding unit will only serve to strengthen theories based on real facts that tend to fall into populist and paralyzing victimhood, or will it be used to give explanations to the partners for the fact that it still does not have it. The partners should not be convinced that the referees did not help their team, they should be clarified (a few claim it) why so many presidents, elected at the polls, paid more than seven million euros to the Negreiras and where they ended up.
