Laporta goes on the defensive

BarcelonaJoan Laporta officially resigned as president of Barça on the very day the election campaign began. In accordance with the club's statutes, Laporta resigned with the intention of running again. Rafael Yuste was taking his place.who will head the provisional board until the end of the season. Josep Cubells, Alfonso Castro, Josep Ignasi Macià, Àngel Riudalbas, Joan Solé, and Sisco Pujol will also remain at the club. Meanwhile, Laporta, along with Elena Fort, Antonio Escudero, Ferran Olivé, José María Albert, Javier Barbany, Miquel Camps, Javier Puig, and Joan Soler, temporarily left the presidential box to begin a campaign that the Laporta camp has been planning for months and has framed as a sprint.

Laporta's final hours as president were meticulously calculated. The week before his resignation, meetings and contract renewals were accelerated. Legally, Yuste could have carried out all these ongoing processes, but the intention was for Laporta and his associates to appear in the official photo. The final straw was an interview with Laporta, broadcast on Sunday by the club's official channels, which was officially presented as a "review before resigning." Even the procedure for his resignation had been calculated: Laporta would address the media upon leaving. But the interim president would make no statement. And this will continue throughout the campaign, in which the intention is for Yuste to maintain a low profile and for his friend and (for now) pre-candidate to take center stage.

Laporta's inner circle has been working on these elections for months. The president knew he could use Barça's entire propaganda machine to his advantage without breaking any laws. In the summer, the communications director changed, and Laporta's routines were modified, making him more visible and more active in public statements.

Everyone knew these were election-related moves, but in the executive offices, the order was to talk about everything except the elections. "Until the elections are called, nothing," said his trusted advisors. The objective was very clear: to minimize the debate. Laporta's opposition took advantage of some breaks in the men's first team's schedule—the international breaks, for example—to try to stir things up and get the president involved. But Laporta didn't take the bait and stuck to his plan. A similar approach to the 2021 elections, in which everyone knew he was going to run, but he waited until the last minute to announce it. "The less election atmosphere there is, the better," admitted his inner circle.

Laporta forgoes the role of campaign manager in order to lead the candidacy himself.

But there will be numerous differences compared to the 2021 elections. The most visible is that Laporta will not have a campaign manager. In the last elections, Laporta teamed up with the publicist Lluís Carrasco, who designed a strategy that took into account every detail, from the candidate's physical appearance to the advertising events. For example, it was his idea to install the iconic banner next to the Bernabéu stadium."Looking forward to seeing you again"– or lose several kilos to maintain a public image that wouldn't cost him points against Víctor Font, the other major contender, ten years his junior.

Instead, Laporta has formed a campaign committee in which he himself will be the top leader and the one with the final say. He will be accompanied by people he trusts, such as Jordi Finestres, the president's loyal lieutenant since his first term at Barça, who will leave the club next week to focus entirely on the elections. Names like Jordi Cuminal and Maite Laporta, who also helped him in the previous elections, are also expected to be part of this team.

No online signatures or postal voting

Before concluding, the board as a whole was tasked with establishing the groundwork for the election campaign. Aside from choosing the date, March 15th, a day on which a match at Camp Nou is not guaranteed and which falls in the middle of the Champions League round of 16, the board had to decide on two key points: the process for collecting signatures to become a candidate and the election day itself. Regarding the endorsements, the statutes allowed pre-candidates to use electronic means to obtain the 2,337 signatures required. However, ultimately, the traditional format of a ballot, a signature in pen, and a photocopy of both sides of the national identity card will be used. There will also be no postal voting on March 15th, citing problems with the postal service in 2021. Furthermore, the club justifies that postal voting made sense during the pandemic. The only concession is that there will be five polling stations across the territory (Barcelona, ​​Girona, Lleida, Tarragona, and Andorra) and that the census will be universal. In other words, anyone can vote wherever they want.