On Sunday the delegates of Futbol Club Barcelona approved the sponsorship agreement reached between the club chaired by Joan Laporta and the music streaming company Spotify, which will mean an injection into the Barça coffers of 435 million euros in the coming years. In a transitional season, after the disastrous passage through the presidency of Josep Maria Bartomeu, Laporta has straightened up the sporting trajectory of the football club by incorporating Xavi Hernández as first team coach for the men, he has returned the enthusiasm to the blaugrana parish, who, in a season in which all looked lost, could yet find some joy in the form of a title, and has closed the deal with Spotify, the Swedish-American music giant with around 490 million active users all over the planet.
The result of the vote by members was overwhelming: 625 votes in favour, 49 against and 27 blank. A percentage that goes beyond a thumbs-up to the sponsor who will replace Rakuten, and is also a vote of confidence in the board of directors just three weeks after the first anniversary of the president's return to the club. In these almost 13 months, Laporta has shown that there is a way out of the hole that the club was stuck in and that it could aspire to a return to the sports elite from next season. The 0-4 at the Bernabéu stadium two weeks ago confirmed that the sensation was not a mirage and gave the club the necessary impetus to aspire to reverse the difficult economic situation that a few months ago threatened to bring the club to its knees.
In the sponsorship deal, Laporta has included the condition that Spotify also will create a Catalan-language version of its app. The fact that a football club establishes among the conditions of the agreement that the music company is obliged to present its application in Catalan soon, remarking that this is because "it is the official language of our club and of Catalonia" explains with great precision what is meant when it is said that Barça is more than a club. Exactly this: in the midst of general bewilderment over the decline of Catalan, judicial interferences that have even defined the percentage of Spanish to be spoken in schools and a political scramble from the parties and civil society to try and give an adequate response, Laporta gives a thump to the table and straightforwardly puts a triumph at the service of the country.
This is the path that a leading entity such as Barça must follow and the best way to understand what the club can also do for Catalonia. I know that a football president's management is appreciated for its sporting successes and economic management, and that the continuity of his leadership is difficult if these pillars teeter. But as we have noted, after almost 13 months, the work has gone reasonably well and the icing on the cake of offering the app in Catalan is not, in fact, the icing on the cake. It is a specific requirement asking for the cake to have some particular ingredients. And also to correct the mistakes of the disastrous management by Bartomeu in which he downplayed the idea that Barça is more than a club.