Barça continues its trend of increasing sponsorship revenue. In the 2024-2025 financial year, it earned €259 million from sponsorships, and it expects to further increase that figure in the current financial year. The most recent agreement is with Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP), a company based in Samoa, a country designated as a tax haven by the European Union. This company specializes in a technology blockchain which prioritizes privacy. "ZKP involves ensuring that the identity of sports fans, data, and intelligence are handled with cryptographic confidence, verifying information with reliable mathematical processes," Barça announced on November 14 regarding an agreement that has gone largely unnoticed by many members unfamiliar with the world of cryptography. crypto.

He wears a sweater as gray as his hair while speaking calmly, as if what he is about to say is a matter of life or death. Juan Tallón (Vilardevós, 1975) has just published A thousand things (Anagrama), a chilling novel due to the sheer amount of reality it contains. While other books by the author abound in metafiction and defeat, in the case of A thousand things —starring a couple with a child who can't balance work and family life— is a collective defeat.

The figures for the 2024-2025 financial year presented by Real Madrid shine, at first glance, like a freshly cleaned ceramic hob. The club, chaired by Florentino Pérez, closed the year with €1.185 billion in revenue, €24 million in profit, and a net worth of €598 million. Barça, on the other hand, closed the year with 994 million in revenue.17 million in losses and a negative net worth of 153 million. But, if you scratch the surface of Real Madrid's finances, you can find traces of dried-up oil, just like at Barcelona.

The soft background melody is about to transform into guitars blasting rock and roll. The opposition to Laporta, which, despite several shared meals, still has notable differences, agrees on one thing: the tree of electoral movements at Can Barça will begin to shake before the end of 2025. "The cards will be on the table soon," one of the potential candidates assures ARA. "I'll announce my candidacy before Christmas, that's for sure," says another who's ready to launch his campaign. "We'll get started at the beginning of December, and if the elections are in March, we'll have to work a bit faster than if they're in June," explains another name that will be part of the electoral race.

The scene lasts only 22 seconds, but it will remain in the protagonists' memories for the rest of their lives. Nil and Gisela, two lifelong Barcelona fans, were celebrating the start of their relationship on Sunday night on Juan XXIII Avenue in Barcelona when they suddenly froze at what was happening behind them. Gisela noticed first, and Nil quickly turned his head to confirm that what seemed impossible was very real: Leo Messi walked past Rodrigo de Paul, his teammate at Inter Miami and in the Argentine national team, and with Pepe Costa, Messi's friend, advisor and companion since his time at Barça.

Leo Messi's clandestine return to Camp Nou made me think of those novels that tell you the ending in the first paragraph, like The tunnel by fellow Argentinian Ernesto Sábato. It only takes 14 words to inform us that a murder has taken place, who the murderer is, and who the victim is. However, this tells us almost nothing, and a whole novel remains to be told. Nor does the image of Messi posing distractedly on the Camp Nou pitch explain much to us.With a touristy air. It's simply a matter of revealing the end of the story in the first paragraph to grab the reader's attention. The images were an emotional explosion, but at first, they didn't resolve any of the core questions.

The big question that many Barça fans have been asking themselves this Monday morning after See the images of Messi at Camp Nou The question is whether the Argentine had entered with Barça's approval or behind the club's back. Barça's official version is as follows: "Messi arrived and requested permission to access the Camp Nou training ground from Limak security personnel. The company forwarded the inquiry to FC Barcelona, who had no problem accepting the request. Messi will always be more than welcome, so there was no issue in authorizing his visit." About two hours after Messi's post, Barça posted another message on the club's Instagram account with a photo of the footballer on the Camp Nou pitch accompanied by the text "Always welcome home, Leo."

If Joan Laporta and Marc Ciria were to step out onto the balconies of their offices on Barcelona's Diagonal Avenue, they could greet each other and even be close enough to converse despite the background noise of the bustling city life. The Barça president's law firm, Laporta & Arbós, is located at 469 Diagonal Avenue, and Ciria, one of the most active members of the opposition and a potential candidate in next spring's electionsThe headquarters of Diagonal Asset Management, a company specializing in financial asset management, is located at 467 Diagonal Avenue. Both are a two-minute walk from Plaça Francesc Macià, the epicenter for years of breakfasts, coffees, and lunches centered around Barça.

Barça, without fanfare, has done its job and has beaten Elche (3-1) With goals from Lamine Yamal, Ferran Torres, and Marcus Rashford. Here are some immediate highlights of the match:

The global mobilization campaign ACT x Palestine drew attention this Sunday to the fact that tickets for the Catalonia-Palestine match, scheduled for November 18, have not yet gone on sale, and that institutions are not promoting it. "Just compare it to the Basque Country-Palestine match," which will be played three days earlier at San Mamés, the stadium owned by Athletic Club, "for which 35,000 tickets were sold on the first day they went on sale," Luca Gervasoni, spokesperson for ACT x Palestine, told ARA. "There, the administrations and institutions work together to ensure the match is a success. In contrast, in Catalonia, there is a network of entities that are hindering the match from taking place at the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys, and we don't want to point the finger at any one in particular because we don't know who is responsible," he added. Gervasoni's fears about the obstacles to holding the match at Montjuïc appear to be well-founded. Official sources from the Catalan Football Federation (FCF) have confirmed to this newspaper that they are looking for other stadiums to host the game. "Our priority is that it takes place. At this point, the main requirement we've been given for playing at Montjuïc is that it requires an investment of more than 600,000 euros, an unaffordable figure. Other options are being explored. Sabadell and Tarragona are two possibilities," say the Federation sources. It's worth remembering that the Estadi Olímpic can hold around 50,000 spectators and is owned by the city, and that the stadiums in Sabadell and Tarragona have a much smaller capacity, less than 15,000 spectators. "The FCF's priority is to organize it, and that's what we're working on," they assure.

When looking for activities that break the ice between people, no matter how culturally distant they may be, Ric Fernández (Santander, 1982) chose soccer. "Soccer can be a way to let off steam, but it's also an art, and it's very inclusive. You don't even need a ball; you can play with a bottle of Fanta between two sweatshirts. Who gives you that? The dance? Do you need the music? The drink? You need the bar, the money, the drink, the connection," explains this journalist and aid worker in a video call between the Cantabrian region of Valles Pasiegos and Barcelona, which had to be done twice because the interviewer didn't record the audio correctly on the first attempt.

One of the few moments that broke the monotony from 11 am of the recent assembly It was when Joan Laporta called "scholars" and "mestretites" to critics around Barça while talking about preserving the club's ownership model. "The board I chair is the guarantor that Barça belongs to its members. Perhaps we are the only guarantors. Those who say that Barça is a company, those scholars, those mestretites that give lessons, alert and far away," Laporta said to the delegate members while raising his voice. But the same week, the club's treasurer, Ferran Olivé, had said that Goldman Sachs, the investment fund backing the financing of Espai Barça, was the one who chose Limak as the construction company for the remodeling of the Camp Nou.

The same set where Xavier Sardà created the ecosystem of Martian Chronicles, featuring such eccentric personalities as Yola Berrocal, Santiago Segura, Leonardo Dantés, and Rocío Madrid, which captivated millions of viewers on television, is what Barça uses, for example, for club media to interview president Joan Laporta. The large space is located in Sant Just Desvern and has belonged to Barça for some time now. The problem is that the failed Barça One project has left it unusable in recent months and, in the meantime, to make some economic profit, the club rents it out to third parties.

Despite the 17 million losses that Barça has had in the 2024-2025 financial year, which entail a total of 230 million in accumulated losses during Joan Laporta's term in office.The virtual meeting of delegate members, as expected, was a breeze for the Barça president. The delegate members (only 553 of the 4,641 summoned voted) approved the accounts with 412 votes in favor, 84 against, and 31 blank votes. They also approved the budget for the 2025-2026 season, with an expected income of 1.075 billion euros and profit of 5 million euros (506 members voted), with 418 votes in favor, 55 against, and 21 blank votes.

In a vacant lot in Santa Fe del Penedès, between lonely vineyards and the C-15 motorway, some pieces of the new Camp Nou are waiting patiently to begin a second life. Being part of of one of the most important works currently being built in southern Europe to an uncertain future that could lead them to become either a stately door to a block of flats in the Eixample district or the nightstand you'll buy next week at Ikea.

For the second time in Barça's history, the club's members are close to adding an item to the meeting's agenda. Businessman Víctor Font did so in 2019. with the initiative of electronic voting and the financier Marc Ciria He may have succeeded in doing so by requesting the revocation of the permission that the assembly granted in 2022 to Joan Laporta's board to sell up to 49.9% of BLM (Barça Licensing & Merchandising), Barça's merchandising division, valued at around €600 million. According to the statutes, Ciria needed the support of at least 3% of members with the right to passive suffrage. This meant around 3,300 signatures. Finally, he collected 3,316 notarized signatures after almost a month of collecting them, as he himself explained this Tuesday at the Can Déu Civic Centre in the Les Corts neighborhood of Barcelona.

There are people close to Joan Laporta who have been asking him for some time, for the sake of his mental health, to relieve himself of some tasks related to Barça, to stop being an omnipresent CEO who leads a meeting about the Espai Barça as well as negotiations for a transfer or the search for new sponsors. the departure of CEO Ferran Reverter in 2022, Laporta's one-man style of leadership has permeated all of the club's departments and fewer and fewer voices have been found. to discuss his position and fewer professionals to free him from having to be everywhere. Managing Barça "like a family business," in the words of the leader himself, also runs the risk of becoming one of the wounds the opposition scratches now that the elections are approaching.

The small print of Barça's numbers can be more interesting than the big print that fills the front pages and headlines. At least, it usually provides a more far-sighted view than the short-term perspective that fills daily debates and the arguments of the current board of directors when defending the numbers to the members. Financial years close with a fixed figure, positive or negative (In this case, a negative of 17 million euros), but behind this figure there may be debts, accounting engineering, pending depreciation and forward kicks that remain in a hidden room from the numbers displayed in the shop window.

The offices of financier Marc Ciria (Barcelona, ​​1979) and lawyer Joan Laporta are only a few meters apart on Barcelona's Avinguda Diagonal, next to Plaça Francesc Macià. This physical proximity is inversely proportional to the distance that separates them in their views on Barça's management. Ciria is in the midst of collecting signatures for the initiative "Stop the Sale of BLM." The goal is to gather the necessary 3,500 signatures (they have more than 2,000) that would dedicate an item on the agenda of Barça's general assembly on October 19 to discuss the future of the club's trading, the asset that generates the most money off the pitch. Ciria speaks to ARA in his office at Diagonal Asset Management, a company of which he is a founding partner and executive president.

Lamine Yamal's appeal to the Barça fans during a match is common. He usually does so after his individual plays, which get the crowd on their feet. Eric Garcia's doing so, with a suffering face, when the opposing team is putting pressure on Barça is even rarer. This latter situation It happened on Wednesday when Paris Saint-Germain was around 1-2 that finally ended up arriving.