Decisive hours for the unified candidacy against Laporta

BarcelonaAfter two frantic weeks searching high and low for signatures, the pre-candidates for the Barça presidency are scheduled to meet this afternoon at Camp Nou to submit their supporting endorsements. They need 2,337 valid endorsements to officially become candidates. Polls, surveys, and general sentiment suggest that Joan Laporta, who is running for re-election, will by far submit the most. The question is how many endorsements his opponents will submit, starting with Víctor Font, who should be second in this ranking, followed by... Marco Ciria and Xavier Vilajoana, who are working until the last minute to try to make the cut. The other two pre-candidates, Daniel Juan and William Maddock, are expected to play only a symbolic role.

Having a good number of signatures is key to facing the elections of March 15And in that respect, Laporta has the advantage. The current president has basked in the adulation of the masses everywhere he goes and has produced striking images that have gone viral. The latest, from Sunday, showing him climbing onto a tractor, added to those of the previous days: trying to drive a mechanical bull to Mercabarna, serving macaroni, demonstrating how to carve ham, or even doing a meditation exercise. In this pre-campaign, his popularity and an emotionally driven discourse have far overshadowed future projects, which were limited to maintaining the status quo.

Laporta started with the undeniable advantage of running for re-election – no Barça president has ever lost an election since universal suffrage was introduced – and he has gained momentum in this short but intense pre-campaign. This has been a real wake-up call for the other candidates, who have intensified their talks in recent hours to reach an agreement and build a united front against Laporta's faction. But, at the time of closing this edition, there was still no agreement on that hypothetical unified candidacy that Víctor Font would head.

In reality, talks between the opposition groups to achieve "Barcelona unity" had begun many months earlier, but no agreement had ever been reached. "Everyone has their team and nobody wants to give anything up," admit representatives from the various pre-candidates. These meetings included Somos un Clam, the movement that launched Joan Camprubí Montal, has also played a leading role, and it's possible he'll end up being part of it.

Last sprint to get the tickets

After Super Saturday, with the signature drive taking advantage of the match at Camp Nou, Sunday was intense at the headquarters of the different candidates, where the supporting ballots were tallied and arguments were prepared to impose their conditions at the final meeting. Sources consulted assure that Víctor Font easily qualifies and that Ciria is likely to have the minimum required signatures. However, Vilajoana would be left out.

According to the sources consulted, Vilajoana is willing to step aside and join Font's board, with the question remaining whether anyone else from his team will be included. However, there are more disagreements with Marc Ciria. He and Font had met on several occasions, but despite moving closer to an agreement, they had never reached a final accord. Font, who feels bolstered by being the opposition pre-candidate with the most signatures, and also by the 17,000 votes he received in the last elections, is asking to head the list and retain the bulk of his management team. Ciria, on the other hand, says he accepts the role of vice-president but demands a much more prominent role on a board that, in his view, cannot be linked to any previous Barça board or committee.

While it's true that presidential candidates can form alliances until the day before the election, this Monday is crucial because they must also submit their list of directors along with the signatures. This speeds things up, especially legally, if this united front ends up winning the election. It's also a point of pressure from Ciria, who warns that if an agreement isn't reached before submitting the signatures, it won't happen afterward.

The signature collection process has been arduous for all the pre-candidates.

In any case, the signature collection process has been arduous, even for Laporta, who will hardly reach the 9,625 valid signatures he collected in 2021. That year he submitted more than 10,200, but around 600 were invalidated, either due to some procedural error or because one of them had been validated. Generally speaking, 5% of the endorsements end up being declared invalid, a figure that all the pre-candidates are aware of: it won't be until Thursday, when the validations are completed, that the final tally will be known.

The other candidates have also worked hard to secure support; even Font, who had access to an extensive database that had allowed him to gather more than 4,400 endorsements in 2021. In his case, he has garnered a good number of votes in regions outside Barcelona; and also in supporters' clubs, where Laporta's support seems to have fallen short. In contrast, Ciria's greatest success, aside from a campaign in which he mentioned Leo Messi, has been having a headquarters located just a few meters from Camp Nou.