March 7th. This is the date that Carles Tusquets, president of FC Barcelona's interim management board, and the three presidential candidates, Joan Laporta, Víctor Font and Toni Freixa, have agreed on as the new date to celebrate the elections of the Blaugrana club, postponed from January 24th due to coronavirus considerations, on the same day as Catalonia has postponed its parliamentary elections.
The club's decision was made on the basis that March 7th will probably be the first day in which Catalonia's sports law can be changed, key to enabling the implantation of voting by mail. As well, according to the experts, the start of the month of March should see a lowering of the peak of the pandemic.
Thus in the end, the elections will take place only eight days before the day that former president Josep Maria Bartomeu was proposing before he resigned in October.
Font, Laporta and Freixa, the three candidates for the presidency at Barça / Sergi Alcàzar - @FidelsalFCB
Postponed after meeting with authorities
After a crunch meeting with Catalan government figures and Procicat civil protection officials, it was decided on Friday morning that the vote, involving tens of thousands of club members, could not take place on the date originally planned, Sunday, January 24th.
The Procicat committee required the club to respect Catalonia's current municipal confinement which, for the time being, is in force until the planned election day. The club was told that "the current epidemiological situation does not make it possible to authorize movement outside municipalities by members who do not have a polling station in their municipality on January 24th, given the high mobility that that would mean".
Tusquets and the current interim management team in Camp Nou / FCB
The parallels with parliament
One of the main points of Friday's internal club meeting was the legal status needed by Carles Tusquets and the other members of the interim management board to continue at the helm beyond January 28th, the day when, according to the statutes of the club, they should abandon their positions. And not only that, there were also other legal points on the table in relation to the postponement of the elections, an action not contemplated in the club's statutes. Again there are parallels with the legal vacuum affecting the Catalan government related to its own electoral postponement.
According to a statement from Joan Laporta after the meeting, a report was drafted freezing the electoral process so that it can be reactivated when appropriate, nine days before the final vote.
Main image: The doors of the club offices while the meeting was being held / Maria Contreras