It is not only a Spanish selection without any Real Madrid player for the first time in the entire history of the World Cups, it is also a selection full of Barça players –up to eight, a milestone that the white club has never achieved– with a marked anti-Madrid accent due to the historical rivalry between the two clubs. The list, which still has a tail, caused havoc in a Real Madrid fully immersed in an electoral process.

Real Madrid will have elections. Enrique Riquelme officially presented his candidacy to preside over the club this Saturday afternoon, on the last day set by the deadlines, and on Sunday the electoral board decided to validate it. Therefore, he will have to call the members to the polls, 20 years later. The president of the energy company Cox assured that he presents an "exciting and serious" project, which "is not against anyone" but in favor of the entity and asked the members "not to be afraid".

The refusal of the Spanish big banks to back Enrique Riquelme's candidacy for the presidency of Real Madrid has pushed the businessman to knock on the doors of foreign financial institutions, and with only a few hours left before the deadline to present a project with substance expires – he has until this Saturday, May 23, at midnight – negotiations remain open. This is the case of Andbank España – the Spanish subsidiary of the Andorran bank Andbank –, with whom Riquelme was finalizing a guarantee this Friday afternoon, according to financial sources speaking to ARA. However, the businessman has also looked across the Atlantic and has knocked on the door of Scotiabank (Canada), as reported by Expansión. This firm is not unknown to Riquelme, as it was part of the banks that financed the purchase by Cox, the energy company he chairs, of the subsidiary that Iberdrola had in Mexico.

Enrique Riquelme Vives (Coix, Alicante, 1989) is finally taking a step forward and will battle to preside over Real Madrid, as he communicated this Thursday afternoon to the Electoral Board of Real Madrid. The businessman has managed to secure a list of names to contest the presidency against Florentino Pérez, who after 26 years presiding over the club, and for the first time, will have an opponent in the white club's elections, the first since those in 2006, which Ramón Calderón won.

Spain is still full of mass graves with the bodies of Republican sympathizers. The cemetery of Alicante still has a very large one unexcavated. A cemetery that is like a time capsule to explain that era, in which the communist poet Miguel Hernández is buried near where the tomb of the leader of the Falange, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, was. The two Spains, very close. Primo de Rivera, the Francoists exhumed him to send him in procession to a tomb in Madrid with all honors. Tens of thousands of Republicans, on the other hand, remain in grave number 9 in Alicante. One of these people is Antonio Ortega, president of Real Madrid.

The time for aspirants to preside over Real Madrid to present a candidacy is running out. For now, only the Valencian Enrique Riquelme, president of the energy company Cox, is the one who has raised his hand to take the step, although this Monday he was still "working on it". He has until this Saturday, May 23. He needs 187 million euros of his own patrimonial guarantee (15% of Real Madrid's budget) and to have been a member of the white club for at least 20 years. Requirements that would be in order, according to Riquelme himself has revealed.

After the confirmation of a blank season, with the defeat in the classic against Barça at the Camp Nou, the players, the coach, and the president of Real Madrid had to answer to the fans. And the Bernabéu delivered its verdict. Well, partially, because Madrid's stadium had the lowest attendance of the season in the inconsequential duel against an Oviedo that is already relegated to the Second Division. It didn't help that it was San Isidro's festivities and the poor results of Álvaro Arbeloa's team. But the spectators responded with whistles, especially towards Kylian Mbappé, and also with banners directed at Florentino Pérez, who lately doesn't have a moment's peace.

Florentino Pérez's press conference on Tuesday was surprising, chaotic and, at times, grotesque. But the fact that the Real Madrid president, visibly nervous, had a sometimes disorganized speech and made off-topic, derogatory or sexist comments, does not mean he did not have some things clear. It was a campaign event, in which he launched the electoral machinery without prior planning and took the opportunity to disqualify the one who, for some time now, he knows is the only rival who can overshadow him.

It is better to remain silent and appear foolish than to speak and remove all doubt. For many years, Florentino Pérez has cultivated his image as a powerful man by managing his silences and using spokespeople of all kinds to deliver his messages. This formula has served him well in forging an image of a person who pulls the strings from the shadows to achieve his aims and bend wills. But on Tuesday, he broke his silence, and in just one hour of a press conference, he displayed arrogance, haughtiness, and irritation because things are not going his way.The president of Real Madrid presented himself to the media as a victim of journalists, a victim of a media conspiracy, a victim of a hostile environment that, according to him, is obsessed with harming his club and his personal image. But this idea of a defenseless man does not quite fit with reality, because he holds large shares of economic, media, and institutional power. He has been president of Real Madrid for twenty-six years, since July 18, 2000, ruling the white club with an iron fist, and now aspires to exceed thirty years in office if he wins the elections he has called. At the same time, he controls an international business conglomerate that invoices tens of billions and employs 170,000 workers. All this has allowed him to weave a network of complicities at all levels, which until today seemed indestructible.No matter how much some try to rewrite history, Real Madrid has historically been the team of the regime. Its proximity to political, economic, and media power has been structural and has yielded evident benefits for decades. The collusion with the State's elites has never been hidden; on the contrary, it has been displayed with absolute naturalness. Also, the large real estate operations that have allowed the club to obtain extraordinary resources, a kind of economic doping that has facilitated sustaining pharaonic sporting projects and always competing with an advantage over many rivals.Florentino Pérez represents this way of understanding football: multimillion-dollar signings, permanent grandiloquence, and a triumphalist narrative built with a deep pocket. When things are going well, he appears as the great visionary. But when the ball stops going in, the project never fails. There are always external enemies ready to conspire against Madrid. And this time the culprits are the journalists.The season that is now ending has been sportingly devastating for the white club, and the final touch has been a defeat at the Camp Nou that has given the League to Barça. It is already known that in football, when the ball doesn't go in, everything that seemed solid is questioned. And when the triumphant narrative cracks, then everything is urgency and the worst version of a leader accustomed to controlling everything emerges.Florentino Pérez offered an exhibition of resentment and arrogance unbecoming of someone with his experience. In just one hour, he managed to portray himself as a leader deeply irritated by any dissenting voice. He pointed out people by name and surname, and fed fake news about supposed refereeing privileges for Barça. And all seasoned, as usually happens, with a paternalistic and sexist tone that some still confuse with friendliness.Powerful people tend to be distrustful, surely as a defense mechanism to protect themselves from self-interested and opportunistic individuals. They talk to many people, but trust no one. Or even worse: they only listen to those who tell them exactly what they want to hear, and those who dare to contradict them, even if they do so honestly, end up marginalized. Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine that there was no one minimally sensible in Florentino's circle who was capable of advising him not to appear before the media with that tone. Resentment weighed more than intelligence, and the result has been a genuine communication disaster that cannot be disguised even by the court of jesters who, like Josep Pedrerol, have come to the rescue to cover up their master's shame.The Madrid of power has been in shock for a few days. The detonator is an undeniable sporting crisis of a team without soul or project, but in the end, everything has been talked about except football. When such a powerful club dedicates more energy to chasing media phantoms than to analyzing its sporting errors, it means something profound is cracking. And that is probably what most worries those in the Bernabéu box today. Not so much having lost titles as having started to lose control of the narrative.

Since the ultrarich have personally declared war on the rest of humanity, they have reinforced a communicative pattern of arrogance, which, without going any further, is shared by the president of the United States and the president of Real Madrid.

Enrique Riquelme Vives (Coix, Alicante, 1989) is the talk of the town in Madrid since this Tuesday afternoon Real Madrid president, Florentino Pérez, implicitly mentioned him during the highly commented press conference in which he announced early elections. At one point during the appearance, the veteran white director spoke of a businessman with a "South American" accent, although he later qualified that he had a "Mexican" accent, who was willing to challenge him for the presidency of Real Madrid. He was referring to Riquelme, who this Wednesday night did not hesitate to respond to Florentino Pérez by asking for more time before the elections. "I would like to convey our full willingness to dialogue together in the coming days and agree on a broader process that allows and fosters the real participation of members and madridistas," the businessman expressed in a letter published in Marca.Unlike the tone of the white club president, Riquelme acknowledges the "leadership" of these years and the fact of having "dominated world football". At the same time, he asks for "time, serenity and reflection" and puts the current electoral process in his sights: "It does not correspond with the promotion of participation and listening that modern democracies require".

"Unusual", "grotesque", "disconcerting". These are some of the adjectives the media have chosen to define Florentino Pérez's press conference this Tuesday, a meeting full of reproaches with which he announced the call for elections for Real Madrid. The president of the white club and candidate for re-election shot against everyone and everything, and singled out media outlets and journalists by name and surname, whom he accused of waging war against him. Hours later, the first covers of newspapers and written and radio editorials reacting to his words were published.

Shortly after Tuesday lunchtime, many Madrid journalists received news of an impromptu press conference by Florentino Pérez. More than one thought it would be to dismiss Álvaro Arbeloa and others thought he might be considering stepping down, as he had done the first time he had gone two seasons without titles, in 2006. But within minutes, club sources were already informing them they were quite mistaken. Quite the opposite: Pérez would go on the offensive and many of those journalists would be publicly attacked. The white president will call elections to make it clear who is in charge, but the move could end up being a shot in the foot, as on this occasion there is indeed a member ready to confront him. Madridismo is living through key days.

The press conference called this afternoon by surprise by Florentino Pérez with the aim of announcing the call for elections at the club has led to a lamentable confrontation with the press that has revealed the true face of the madridista president. The entire intervention has been a forward flight that has distilled arrogance, haughtiness, sexism, and contempt for journalists and any shadow of opposition. It has been a communication catastrophe for the entity from which it will take many years to recover.

"I regret to inform you that I will not resign." Thus began Florentino Pérez's first press conference in 13 years. The all-powerful white president urgently summoned the media this Tuesday afternoon, but did not announce the name of the new first-team coach after two years without titles. Nor did he say he was resigning due to his advanced age. Quite the contrary: more belligerent than ever against "the bad guys," he announced elections "for the coming weeks" and challenged those Madridistas who want to dispute his position. "'Where is Florentino?' they ask. They say I don't exist, that I'm sick, that I have terminal cancer... I take this opportunity to tell the people who worry about me that I preside over Real Madrid every day and that I am in perfect health," stated the leader.

Barça on Sunday put the finishing touch to a fantastic League in the most brilliant way. It had never happened before and 62,000 Barcelona fans were privileged witnesses. Confirming and celebrating the championship at Camp Nou with a victory against Real Madrid is orgasmic. But doing so after the farce that the white dressing room has gifted in recent days, with fisticuffs, stitches, leaks, and disciplinary proceedings, elevates the climax to superlative levels. Not even the most optimistic culé would have imagined such an outcome. It's hilarious, as Kylian Mbappé has already done.

Barça culminated a historic night to remember. The 2-0 victory allows the azulgranas to conquer the 29th League in their history, the second consecutive one since Hansi Flick's arrival at the bench. The Camp Nou experienced a night full of joy in what was a party from the first moment. Rashford and Ferran Torres put the 2-0 just after the start of the match against a Real Madrid that closed a week to forget —with internal fights included— seeing how the eternal rival won (and lifted) the League right in front of their noses.

Barça has communicated the death of Hansi Flick's father hours before playing a classic that could decide La Liga. The club has expressed its condolences to the German coach, who will be on the Camp Nou bench for the duel against Real Madrid (9 p.m., Movistar LaLiga), according to the club.

The most anticipated match of the season arrives at Camp Nou. Barça hosts Real Madrid in what could be a celebration for Barcelonism. After the surreal week experienced in Valdebebas — with the fight between Tchouaméni and Fede Valverde — Hansi Flick's team can deliver the decisive blow on Sunday from 9 p.m. If the blaugranas do not lose, they will be mathematically crowned league champions with three matchdays still to play.

Alvaro Arbeloa, Real Madrid's coach, stated in a press conference that he will not "burn his players in a public bonfire" and believes that neither Aurélien Tchouaméni nor Fede Valverde deserve the treatment they are receiving after the two fights between them that ended with the Uruguayan in the hospital and a fine of 500,000 euros each.