I met Pep Guardiola a few months after he landed on Football Club Barcelona's bench in July 2008 and when the aura of best coach in the world was still a long way off. Through a mutual friend, we had lunch together and the conversation ended up being give and take: I wanted to talk about football and he wanted to talk about journalism. As I realised later on other occasions I remember well, Guardiola always got his way and we ended up talking about newspapers and the news. Also about the disinformation which occasionally one or other of the city's sports papers would sometimes publish with impunity. They always said scornfully that Guardiola liked to read and was a friend of the poet Martí i Pol. He wasn't the global icon he is now but you had to listen to him not only when he was talking about football but also about journalism. And about the country. He's not a partisan but is the prototype for the image of a certain Catalonia which we could define as that which said "enough" after the Constitutional Court's verdict over the Statute of Autonomy.
With this spirit he joined Junts pel Sí's candidacy in September 2015 and took part in some of the events in the run up to the 1st October referendum and this led to the Civil Guard naming him in a report for judge Pablo Llarena of the Supreme Court. His crime, reading a manifesto in favour of the referendum in the event held at Montjuïc in Barcelona in June 2017 organised by pro-independence organisations. That Guardiola making his debut on Barça's bench is today without a doubt the best coach in the world and the main reference point for Catalonia worldwide. For that reason, Guardiola stings and for that reason every word from Pep about the political situation in Catalonia is a slap in the face to the Spanish government.
The coach regularly appears with his yellow loop calling for the release of the prisoners and denouncing the existing framework of freedoms in Spain in a country as important as the United Kingdom. As such, when Guardiola is asked about the imprisonment of the 'Jordis', Oriol Junqueras and Quim Forn, he says that "they don't deserve it" and that "it's scary because it could happen to you". Many think so, beyond independence supporters, but the pages of all newspapers open to Guardiola, as do radio and TV news. As such, when Guardiola speaks he's not only telling truths like fists but also harms those who defend the repression of the independence movement at any cost. Those who think the "a por ellos" (go get them) was the only political action to try to deal with the more than two million votes in ballot boxes and an absolute majority in the Catalan Parliament. As such, for years, they've always wanted to silence the same people.