Apotheosis Laporta

Joan Laporta and his team, in the 1899 Auditorium of the Camp Nou, after winning the FC Barcelona elections.LLUIS GENE / AFP

Joan Laporta will return to the Camp Nou on the shoulders of the partners and applauded by his rivals Víctor Font and Toni Freixa.

Nobody resists his spell at a time when the Saharan dust covers an aging stadium and the club does not come out of the astonishment caused by the effects of

.

Barça fans need a point of light to get out of their sporting and economic crisis and the Barcelona lawyer, now retired from politics, offers himself the best solution for the Barcelona lift.

As happened in 2003, the partners are entrusted to Laporta, the winner with 30,184 votes (54.28%) compared to the 16,679 (29.99%) of Font and the 4,769 (8.58%) of Freixa after that the participation was 55,611 partners (50.42%).

The president, who always had a very loyal vote of around 14,000 members, surpassed the votes of 2003: 27,138 compared to 30,184.

Also on both occasions his unappealable triumph has been accepted and applauded by his opponents: Font, Freixa and Laporta joined in a long and effusive hug at the end of the day at the Camp Nou.

The social response, already active in the vote of no-confidence that caused the resignation of Josep Maria Bartomeu (19,308 votes), was the second most important in history (the first is from 2010: 57,088), a very significant detail if one attends to the voting conditions for the security measures caused by covid-19.

The postal vote, used by 22,811 members and which was scrutinized at the same time as the face-to-face vote, the other five authorized venues (Girona, Lleida, Tarragona, Tortosa and Andorra) and the regional confinement, which limited mobility, reduced attendance and the party lived in the stadium in previous elections, such as those of 2015, when Bartomeu won with 25,823 votes, or 2010, the year Rosell won with 35,021.

The confinement caused precisely a certain controversy because some partners were fined by the police controls after being invited to vote, and therefore to break the regulations, by the candidates and the Barça Management Commission.

One of the most illustrious attendees was Messi, who voted for the first time, a detail that supports his commitment to the entity when his contract ends on June 30 and last summer he expressed his desire to leave in a burofax sent to the legal services of the Barça.

Some footballers feel complicit in the critical moment of the entity, surely because they have agreed to defer the payments of their contracts (more than 130 million) and they know that they are responsible for the salary mass being the highest in the Champions League (higher than 500 million), the tournament that has become the nightmare of the Camp Nou.

The players who voted distrusted Bartomeu and maintained a good relationship with Laporta, the 42nd president, dominator from beginning to end of the process, who presented the most signatures: 9,625.

Despite the fact that the campaign has dragged on and the club has been without a president for 131 days since Bartomeu's resignation on October 27 - initially the elections were scheduled for January 24 -, Laporta has not even needed the announcement of a signing or of a figure, beyond the fact that his bet on Mateu Alemany and possibly Jordi Cruyff is supposed, after reinforcing Ronald Koeman.

He returns to the club with even more support after his end of term in 2010 was answered by Rosell's board, after a motion of censure was passed in 2008. The statements by Font and Freixa announce a Barça catharsis to save a critical situation that it is estimated at a debt of about 1,173 million.

Laporta, who will have to deposit in LaLiga a guarantee of 124 million with the approval of the Bank of Spain, plans to travel tomorrow to Paris in the spirit of victory for PSG-Barça after paying tribute to Cruyff last night.