Joan Laporta, the return of an excessive seducer

In love and at parties, in politics or in business, everything seems excessive in Joan Laporta.

A lawyer by profession, the former president of Fútbol Club Barcelona returns to the task to regain the leadership of this sports entity.

After his successful tenure as Barça presidency, between 2003 and 2010, Laporta has been a deputy in the Parliament of Catalonia, a Barcelona councilor and, above all, an inexhaustible source of news about his romances and unbridled leisure.

After an unsuccessful attempt to return to the Barça presidency in 2015, he is once again the favorite for the next elections of the entity.

Laporta never leaves you indifferent.

Madrid woke up last Tuesday with a giant reproduction of him hanging on a canvas on Paseo de la Habana, very close to Madrid's Santiago Bernabéu stadium.

"Want to see you again," read the slogan on the large banner that covered a facade of the Spanish capital.

The message, far from being addressed to Madrid, was a declaration of intent for the Blaugrana partner who will have to elect its new president in January.

Laporta, a charismatic character who awakens phobias and phobias like few others, seems to follow as a philosophy of life the advice that his admired Johan Cruyff gave to his players before playing in the final of the 1992 European Cup: “Go out and enjoy”.

If there is something that Laporta has enjoyed, it has been champagne and his art of seduction with women.

Sparkling wine is almost an icon of the most famous celebrations of the candidate for the Barça presidency.

It was like this in some images of Laporta watering a summer afternoon with champagne on a yacht in Ibiza waters, in 2017, accompanied by women much younger than him, or his famous photographs in which he appeared drenched in alcohol at a 2009 party to celebrate a victory for the Blaugrana against Real Madrid, in the Luz de Gas party room, owned by Fede Sardá, brother of the journalist Xavier Sardá and the late actress Rosa María Sardá.

In that evening the celebrity Vicky Martín Berrocal was also present.

At another party, in 2012, the then deputy ended up bathing with clothes and with his tie tied on his forehead, in a swimming pool, during the wedding of businessman Antonio Girardi.

At the link, Laporta was accompanied by an Italian doctor, dermatologist Chantal Sciuto.

The last sounded social meeting in which he participated took place in 2016, in the summer residence of Cadaqués (Girona) of the opinion and independence activist Pilar Rahola.

The famous gathering brought together numerous friends at her home, such as the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont, the chief commissioner of the Mossos de Esquadra, Josep Lluís Trapero, or Dr. Bonaventura Clotet, father of the actors Aina and Marc Clotet, among others .

Laporta's independence movement comes from afar and has led him to be a deputy in

for the Solidaritat party (SI) or a Barcelona councilor in the group of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC).

As a result of the 2010 electoral campaign with SI, Laporta met the pornographic film star María Lapiedra, with whom he had a brief relationship.

Laporta has had a very active love life since he divorced Constanza Echevarría twelve years ago.

His ex-wife, with whom he has three children and with whom he maintains a good relationship, is the daughter of Juan Echevarría, an important businessman from Barcelona who was president of the Fecsa electricity company and Nissan Motor Ibérica.

One of the most important controversies that Laporta had to face during his tenure at Barça was when it came to light that he had hired Alejandro Echevarría at the club, who at that time was his brother-in-law and a member of the Francisco Franco Foundation.

Another contract for Laporta at the club that caused a stir, and which ended up in court in 2009, was that of Flavia Massori, a young Brazilian whom he met, according to the chronicles of the time, when she was employed at the luxurious Arts hotel. from Barcelona.

Laporta's list of possible romantic relationships is inexhaustible.

One of his official partners was the Moroccan businesswoman Sana Khouja, 25 years his junior.

He has also been very close friends with the Italian television presenter Simona Ventura and has even been linked, sentimentally, but also in various businesses, with Gulnara Karimova, daughter of the president of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, for decades.

The lawyer and ex-politician from Barcelona has acknowledged having done business with businessmen from the surroundings of Karimov and Karimova, such as the attempted acquisition of Real Club Deportivo Mallorca in 2009 by investors from that country.

In the last three years, Laporta has maintained a discreet profile, away from the spotlight, a discretion that he is now abandoning to win back Barça.