The solidarity estelada that set fire to an Espanyol shareholders' meeting

BarcelonaEspanyol is holding an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders this Friday, in which a capital increase of almost 38 million, which will clean up the perico team and allow it to return to the 1:1 rule of the fair play of the League. As is customary at the blue and white club, it will be conducted online, and shareholders' requests and questions, previously submitted through an online platform, will be read and answered aloud by the club. This means that there will be no repeat of interventions like those of the illustrious Quimet Cañellas, which popularized the phrase "Good afternoon, my friends all." Nor violent episodes, such as the one suffered by Ernest Vilches in 2012, on November 19, when a handful of fans tried to attack him after displaying an Estelada flag with the Espanyol colors during his speaking turn at the Fira de Cornellà.

"There are people who believe it was part of a political campaign, or that there were pro-independence parties or groups behind that action. That's not true. It was a voluntary act and carried out in a personal capacity," explains Vilches, a partner and shareholder in Espanyol, who days before had already been heckled for displaying that flag. "After an article came out in NOW newspaper Regarding the blue and white esteladas we carried at the stadium, my family and I received threats and verbal attacks; that was very serious. And during my speech at the board meeting, I decided to speak out and display the estelada with Espanyol's colors," he says.

That gesture ignited the event and provoked a small group of "far-right" fans invited by one of the presidential candidates into a rage, vehemently insulting Vilches and attempting to attack him. Blood was prevented thanks to the swift intervention of security forces. It was a tense shareholders' meeting that crowned Joan Collet as the new president of Espanyol, succeeding Ramon Condal. Both were also hissed and booed by the more radical part of the audience.

The estelada that brings hope to the Sahara

Vilches came up with the design of the blue and white estelada while looking for funding options for the NGO he chairs, the Association for the Development of Solidarity Projects in the Sahara (APSS). He founded it years ago with some colleagues who had completed their military service in the Sahara in 1973 and 1974, with the aim of helping Sahrawi refugees exiled in Algeria due to the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara.

"The Process was on everyone's lips, and we thought it would be a good idea to market pro-independence flags in the colors of different teams. We called the projectPut an estelada on your colors", explains thealma mater of the APSS, which is still operating today and, among other projects, runs a program for diabetics, with more than 130 patients, in the Dakhla camp, one of the five located in Tindouf, in southwest Algeria.

They made star-shaped banners for 10 euros in the colors of Barça, Joventut de Badalona, ​​​​Girona, ​​Castellón and many other teams. "One of my teammates, a Barça fan, told me: 'We shouldn't do the Espanyol one because there are no pro-independence Pericos.' Well, it was the most requested of all. We sold more than 2,000," says Vilches, who, in addition to sending humanitarian aid to the Sahara, has also distributed Jarque marches and founded the Peña Perica Los Bubis de El Aaiún, the first in Africa.

The activist, who continues to go to Cornellà-El Prat every two weeks with his estelada flag, believes that the unfortunate incident with the flag at the 2012 shareholders' meeting, more than 12 years ago, served as a "marketing campaign" for his NGO.