Who decided to sideline the president of Catalonia, Quim Torra, from his place of honour in the box at Futbol Club Barcelona during last Sunday's match between Barça and Real Sociedad? Why was Torra not given the recognition that, before him, had been granted to president Carles Puigdemont and each and every one of his predecessors as president since the restoration of the Catalan government?
This decision, coming precisely at the most delicate moment for the Catalan government in the middle of the suspension of self-governance and an extraordinarily complex process to manage to move forwards with setting up the new government, was a very unpleasant surprise for the staff accompanying Torra and who showed their displeasure with the change they hadn't even been told of. It was Torra, a Barça fan during his third day as president of Catalonia, who avoided the scene escalating further. He opted for defusing the situation and taking the seat he had been assigned, to the right of the club's president, Josep Maria Bartomeu.
Officially, as Bartomeu explained this Tuesday in an interview with Catalunya Ràdio, it was as part of a change to the box's protocol "adopted months ago" and, according to which, it will from now on be the club's president who always presides over matches. "I believe that I'm president of Barça, voted for by the members, and I have to represent the club at matches", he argued in the interview, adding: "I'm very happy for Quim Torra to come to the box and to have a place of honour beside me, as the Parliament's speaker also does sometimes".
Bartomeu's decision
This supposed "change of protocol", however, was completely unheard of. The board of directors hadn't communicated it publicly as they usually do with their agreements. Sources have told El Nacional that the change was actually made at the last moment. Even that it was apparently a personal decision by Barça's president, taken shortly before the match and with no debate.
This would explain that neither Barça's president's office, nor any member of the board, nor the club's experienced protocol services had warned the Catalan president's office of this before the match. Quim Torra found out that Bartomeu wouldn't cede the position of honour in the box to him minutes before entering to take his seat. The situation gave rise to tensions between Barça staff and government officials.
Bartomeu's action this Sunday broke a deeply-rooted club tradition, the most important seat in the box having historically been offered to the president of Catalonia when they were present. There's no written protocol, but a decades-long history which has become the norm. From now, it won't be so. From now on, it will be like at Real Madrid's stadium, where that club's president, Florentino Pérez, always presides over the box.
The thing, however, is that Barça isn't Real Madrid. The controversy over the recognition the club affords the president of Catalonia joins other political controversies Barça has been enveloped in, often deriving from the independence process. For example, the club's decision to go ahead with the match against Las Palmas on 1st October last year, after the police violence during that day's referendum, and to hold it behind closed doors, caused an internal crisis which ended up with Carles Vilarrubí and Jordi Monés leaving the board.