Bartomeu plans to resign as president of FC Barcelona

Josep Maria Bartomeu, president of FC Barcelona, ​​Germán Parga (EFE)

The president of FC Barcelona, ​​Josep Maria Bartomeu, will resign from his position at the head of the Barça club this afternoon.

The Catalan leader will thus avoid submitting to a vote of no confidence that was to be held this weekend, on November 1 and 2, after exhausting all the options available to delay the vote.

Bartomeu will not be able to arrive like this, as was his wish, to the elections that should have been held next March.

The decision of the maximum Barça leader has been precipitated in the last hours after the Government of the Generalitat has responded to the request of the Board of Directors of FC Barcelona, ​​which had been trying to buy time for days before submitting to said question of confidence of the partner.

Catalan politicians, to whom Bartomeu went to delay the referendum, citing difficulties in complying with security requirements in the midst of the COVID crisis, insisted this morning that there were no "legal or health impediments" that would prevent the holding of the motion of censure presented by the

platform

against the current directors of the Barça club.

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Thus, and despite using all possible strategies to save time - their objective was to delay the vote of no confidence that many more than the 16,520 signatures required by the statutes have already supported at the polls;

in fact, the table validated 19,380 signatures of partners - the president, Josep Maria Bartomeu, was losing the pulse with the Generalitat and was compelled to urgently call the referendum this weekend, on November 1 and 2, when it expires the maximum term according to the statutes of the entity.

To avoid submitting to this vote of no confidence, the board of directors was summoned to an urgent meeting at 7:00 this afternoon to announce its resignation en bloc.

The Barça directive intended, as a measure to gain time before closing the exercise in false manner, that the referendum be postponed for 15 days due to logistics and decentralization issues - it proposed 21 venues, 13 in Catalonia and eight in other parts of Spain - in order to comply health regulations caused by covid-19.

But the Government never saw it necessary.

There were, the Catalan politicians considered, no circumstance that prevented going to the polls on November 1 and 2 and at the same time meeting the requirements demanded by Civil Protection.

This has been the last straw that has filled a glass that has been overflowing for months, perhaps since the club decided to dismiss coach Ernesto Valverde, a decision that captain Leo Messi did not like and that part of the team did not understand, split in two since then.

The controversies between the Argentine 10 and Abidal, the Barçagate that involved the entity in the dark management of social networks or the pulse that, again Messi, threw Bartomeu to force his departure from the entity ended up forcing a reaction of the opposition that arrived accompanied by the support of the social mass.

Bartomeu managed only a few days ago to postpone sine die the General Assembly of Compromisario Partners citing health reasons, but he has not been able to do the same with the motion.

His goodbye was irremediable.

The resignation of the board of directors forces a management commission, chaired by Carles Tusquets, president of the statutory economic commission, to take charge of the entity and have to call elections within a maximum period of three months.