Barcagate

If the media empire of Rupert Murdoch has its hackgate, Spanish football has its Barcagate– or does it?

One of the longest serving football club presidents in the history of the game, Jose Luis Núñez, has just been condemned to a prison sentence of six years by a Spanish court after being found guilty on charges of bribery and falsification of documents.

Also found guilty, and condemned to a prison sentence of eleven year years was Josep Maria Huguet, the inspector of taxes in Catalonia between 1985 and 1994 who was accused, along with some of his also condemned officials, of falsifying tax returns in return for cash and properties at preferential rates.

The case dates back more than a decade and covers a period when Núñez ruled FC Barcelona with an iron grip. I have written at length about Núñez’s period at the helm one of the most famous sporting institutions   in the world in my book Barca, A  People’s Passion. But it’s worth turning to a bit of history here for those who lack memory.

In late 1977, two months after the emotional return to Spain   of Josep Tarradellas the ageing president of the Catalan government exiled by Franco, the president of FC Barcelona Agustin Montal resigned, paving the way for new elections. Two front-runners emerged to succeed him. The favourite was Victor Sagi, a long-serving Barca member who ran one of the biggest advertising agencies in Spain. The other candidate was Núñez, the president of the family owned company Núñez y Navarro, the biggest construction and property company in Catalonia.

Núñez had made a fortune out of the reckless and poorly regulated urban growth that took place in Catalonia during the last two decades of Franco’s rule   (1957-73). One of his more notorious developments, or rather destructions, involved buildings in the picturesque Eixample district. In order to increase floor and parking space and speculate on high property prices, Núñez’s bulldozers flattened old walls and imposed a crude urban monotony across a large swathe of the Catalan capital. In 1975, the year of Franco’s death, Núñez’s company constructed a hideous housing block next to Gaudi’s magnificent Sagrada Familia, in the exact place where the original plans had at one time promised an extension of the religious masterpiece.

At the beginning of 1978, soon after declaring his candidacy, Núñez was approached by an anonymous fixer and offered a list of all Barca members with their addresses. Núñez later told the Catalan journalist Josep Morera Falco that he had bought the register for 70,000 pesetas. Weeks later Sagi suddenly pulled out of the race. At a press conference Sagi stated he had done so for the sake of unity within the club. It seemed an odd excuse for a front runner but it came amid attempts by Núñez to discredit him with a series of well-placed media leaks about his personal life.

When I interviewed Sagi twenty years later he told me: “Núñez tried his best to stop people thinking that the reason I had done it (left the race) was as an act of loyalty to the club. That is why he spun the rumour that that there were secrets that might put me in a compromising position. There were even rumours that I had hired some private detectives to follow me. Núñez thought that money could buy everything, but the dossier never existed.”

Núñez was elected president and served for twenty years. During his time in office, the club membership rose from 77,000 to over 103,000 and its annual revenue from 817 million pesetas to 14.9 billion. Towards the end of the 20^th century Núñez had remained in office far longer than the president of any other club or organisation in the world, politicians included.  About that time, in 1999, I interviewed him and asked him whether he had not learnt the lesson of history: that it is sometimes more advisable to walk out voluntarily through the front door, with your head high, than to wait until you are forced through the back, in the midst of scandal.

“I have offered my resignation on certain occasions. The problem is that every time I do so, people have come forward who want to control the club in a way that would not do it any favours,” he replied.

Such arguments are those well rehearsed by autocrats, but his answer ignored the complex web of vested interests that had sustained Núñez  in power: his awkward and sometimes tempestuous relationship with Jordi Pujol, who succeeded Tarradellas  as head of the Catalan government ; the dexterity with which Núñez managed to bring onto  his ruling junta key businessmen and officials representing  a broad sweep of the political spectrum, including members of the Catalan Socialist Party; his public rows on occasions with Real Madrid, which enthused Barca supporters.

It was under Núñez also that FC Barcelona won several trophies including La Liga and the first European Cup with Cruyff’s ‘dream team’.  Cruyff earned not insubstantial pay and conditions during Núñez’s   presidency as did some of the world’s other better known managers from Cesar Menotti to Terry Venables and Bobby Robson (during whose time one Jose Mourinho worked as the Englishman’s assistant and translator), and an impressive list of foreign star players- Cruyff himself, Maradona, Gary Lineker, Laudrup, Koeman, Rivaldo, Ronaldo inter alia.

In style and management Núñez was in many ways typical of the new breed of businessmen that took charge in the 1990’s. He echoed the ambitions of Silvio Berlusconi although stopped short of standing for the presidency of Catalonia. In one key respect he was always handicapped: he did not have, nor was he allowed to have, the power that would have come to him as a majority shareholder in FC Barcelona. The club was not listed on the stock exchange. In statutory terms it belonged to its members. And much as he tried to control Barca as his own fiefdom and counted on the support of bankers and sponsors, he ended up having to tackle unsuccessfully a widely felt and deeply entrenched tradition of Catalan nationalism and fan power within Barca. His biggest mistake in the end was perhaps in alienating the club legend Johan Cruyff and thinking that he knew more about football than  his best manager and player.

After an interim period presided over by Joan Gaspart and others, the Núñez era at Barca was effectively brought to an end by a populist fan-based movement called the Elefant Blau whose manifesto called for a greater transparency of the club’s accounts, the limiting of the presidential mandate to terms of four years, and more care with the money spent on foreign players. The Elefant Blau put Joan Laporta in as president and his running mate ex-Nike executive Sandro Rosell initially as his deputy. Laporta’s presidency (2003-2010) recorded four Spanish league titles and two Champions League twice – the most successful period in the club’s history.

Laporta was later elected to the Catalan parliament as member of a left-wing grouping which wants Catalonia’s indepededence from the rest of Spain. He is fighting to clear his name amid allegations –he denies-of mismanagement and financial irregularities, unconnected with the Núñez case, made against him since his one-time friend Rosell took over as president of Barca.

God forbid lest Barca’s wonderful reputation as the world’s greatest football club be tarnished by all the above. It is perhaps just as well that in Madrid, the news today like elsewhere in Spain is dominated by the announcement by the country’s beleaguered socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero that he is bringing forward next March’s general election to this autumn as the country battles against contagion. The fact that the politically discredited Zapatero is a declared Barca fan is probably better forgotten.