From Palau de la Música to Laporta’s Barça: The Decline of Catalonia’s Elites.

This week that Fèlix Millet has died, it is worth remembering that in July 2009 the Mossos d’Esquadra searched the Palau de la Música. A private entity headed by Felix Millet, a great man of the Catalan bourgeoisie, who had a problem with the VAT declaration. From the beginning it was seen that the issue was going to get worse. And it was.

The vice president of the Palau, Marion Carulla, took control, assumed the presidency and filled the Palau with auditors. As a first step, General Manager was appointed John Linares and responsibilities were purged to the end. The patrimonial hole exceeded 31 million. Felix Millet, Jordi Montull and his accomplices were sentenced to 9 years in prison for defrauding 23 million from the entity. The Palau de la Música is still in person, demanding that the CDC repair the stolen funds. Civil society mobilized and although justice was slow, the great fortunes that made up the board of trustees of the Palau de la Música can feel proud.

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The entity was completely private. The Generalitat could do little. He lacked the capacity to intervene in an entity dominated by private employers. It was the management of the businessmen who, with determination, saved the Palau de la Música, its symbolic value for Catalanism and its importance as a cultural infrastructure. It was 2009. The president of the Generalitat was Jose Montilla. The Catalonia of that time seems very far away. Three years later the great independence mobilizations of the day of and would start the process, that process that now Pedro Sánchez assures that it has ended.

But the economic and business elites have not escaped unscathed. The proof is at FC Barcelona, ​​with more than 143,000 members. A small part of them are part of that business elite. The advertiser Lluís Bassat ran for the presidency Salvador Alemany he was for a long time president of the blaugrana basketball section. Josep Lluís Núñez He was not only the first housing developer in Catalonia, he was also the president of FC Barcelona for many years. Personalities such as Carles Vilarrubí, who became vice president at the time of Sandro Rosell. Just to review in recent times, they have had prominent positions in various club bodies: James Guardiola (Sabadell Bank), Silvio Elias (Goat), Carlos Tusquets (Fibanc), Anthony Esteve (Esteve Laboratories) and Joseph Maria Xercavins (Metropolis). others like Evarist Murtra o Miquel Roca They have run for office. Barça is not only more than a club. It has been the reflection and catwalk for an entire business elite that now seems blurred.

Silence on the Titanic

Fourteen years after the Palau de la Música, no one assumes the role of then in an FC Barcelona that looks like the Titanic sailing at full speed towards the iceberg. The club owes 1,200 million that in 2024 will begin to expire, making financial costs more expensive. He has sold a good part of his assets, the “levers” of Joan Laporta, but he has neither reduced his debt nor the wage bill, which continues to strangle an entity with annual operating losses of 200 million. Besides, is negotiating this month to borrow another $1.5 billion in US corporate bonds. An operation in which in just a handful of weeks the rating has already been lowered once. And, among the doubts that they can lower it again, it only occurred to Laporta and his team to ask that the rating be secret. The problem is not just the looming debt overhang. It has also caused a stir the award of the works to the Turkish company Limak, which the club invited after lowering the requirements of the award process.

All this could be bad. But it is worse because of the “Negreira case”: the payments continued for 17 years to the vice president of the Spanish arbitrators, José Maria Enriquez Negreira, who received seven million euros during that period for indeterminate services without any auditor or club control detecting anything unusual. The Barcelona Prosecutor’s Office has already announced a complaint for crimes such as “continued corruption and unfair administration.” The League has advanced that it will appear as a private prosecution. Last week the Real spanish soccer federation joined those who announced to appear and informed the UEFA, which could penalize the blaugrana leaving them out of the Champions League. To make matters worse, they assault the house of the examining magistrate and Catalonia, at times, seems like Sicily.

To the economic problems we must add the fact that he was left out of the Champions League

With this scenario and with FC Barcelona out of the Champions League and the Europa League it would be logical to expect a social outcry and an elite of businessmen trying to take over from Laporta and his board. Not at all.

no opposition

Victor Font, the co-founder and CEO of Delta Partners was the opponent of Laporta. He is also the editor of the newspaper Ara. But the citizen Kane of the independence movement has opted for a more than discreet role. He is very far from that “Elefant blau” headed by a young Joan Laporta at the time of John Gaspart. While, the institutional crisis is primed with Barça and one sector contaminates the other, since the Enríquez Negreira case affects the price of financing the Espai Barça.

It’s not just that Font street. It’s that everyone is silent. All partners. The only voice is that of Laporta, who repeats in public and in private that everything is going well, when the opposite is more than obvious. The Generalitat, as in the case of the Palau, lacks the powers to intervene. But he hasn’t asked or questioned anything either. Anna Caula, general secretary for sport of the Generalitat, an area that depends on the Presidency, has not met with Laporta to analyze the crisis or to discuss his own. But, certainly, the responsibility lies with the partners, who have not requested any protection from the Catalan administration, with which Peter Aragonés and their government have it very easy to show that this crisis has nothing to do with them. FC Barcelona is a wasteland for any critical thinking, where it worries that Barça will only go out onto the field to defendas if the first team’s game was nothing more than a metaphor for the only thing this board will do now and in a few years: defend itself.

The only voice in the Barça crisis is that of Laporta who says that everything is going well.

The crises at FC Barcelona and at the Palau de la Música are similar. The reaction of Catalan businessmen between one and the other in these 14 years that separate them differ like night and day. The closest thing to an internal response was when the builder Jordi Llauradó He resigned as head of the Espai Barça, three days after the award to Limak. Even so, he remains on the board, in charge of the Barça Foundation, focused on his critical silence.

In the financial media, it is warned that many members of the Catalan bourgeoisie find themselves unable to deal with a debt problem of the dimensions of the one accumulated by FC Barcelona and fear that it could only end up leading to the conversion of the club into a sports limited company. If in the end La Liga ends up taking action, it will be fun to see certain media and a part of the political class talk about “a sports 155”.

Laporta: “I knew Enríquez Negreira a bit, but Barça never bought referees”

Albert Ortega. Barcelona

But there was a time when Catalan businessmen did not subscribe to victimhood and took the reins to be masters of their destiny and protect their institutions. Between the courage of Mariona Carulla and the silence of the Laporta board, not only 14 years have passed, but a whole world. Millet was hiding. Laporta does what he does in full view of everyone. Then, when the evil is irremediable, all those who are now silent will come out to be scandalized and, like in the movie Casablanca, they will exclaim: “Here we play!” Fèlix Millet has died in ignominy, true, but in the leadership of Barça there is no excess of dignity either.

This week that Fèlix Millet has died, it is worth remembering that in July 2009 the Mossos d’Esquadra searched the Palau de la Música. A private entity headed by Felix Millet, a great man of the Catalan bourgeoisie, who had a problem with the VAT return. From the beginning it was seen that the issue was going to get worse. And it was.