Sandro Rossell was a young vice-president of Barça and then president from 2010 to 2014. But the misfortune exploded in his face in May 2017, when the prosecution accused him of money laundering and other crimes and he was imprisoned by the judge of the National High Court Carmen Lamella. The strangest thing was that Rosell – a well-known businessman – was systematically and without justification denied bail for almost two years. Then, on the first day of the oral trial, the three magistrates of the National High Court who were supposed to judge him released him and ended up acquitting him of all charges due to lack of evidence.
What happened to him has all the makings of a ‘kafkaesque’ story. And the fact that the investigating judge was promoted shortly after to a magistrate of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court added more intrigue to the case. Such a long prison without bail (the legal limit is two years) is not normal. And now the case has become even more murky when it has become known that the prosecutor’s accusation was based, at least in part, on an undocumented report by the famous Commissioner Villarejo. The one of, among others, the call Operation Catalonia.
Why did Justice keep Rosell in prison without bail, and without evidence, for two years? The truth is that what is known these days contributes to giving more credibility to Rosell’s thesis that everything was due to a maneuver of some state apparatuses with businessmen with whom he was confronted.
In Catalonia -with the excuse of fighting the ‘procés’ and the independence movement- too many strange things happened that it would be necessary to clarify. And what happened to Sandro Rosell is quite unimaginable. We will see the course of the lawsuit that the businessman will now file against Villarejo.
But, apart from the sad judicial and prison experience, Sandro Rosell is also a witness to the political drama of the Catalan bourgeoisie. i met his father, James Rosell, who was manager of Barca, in 1970. CDC did not yet exist, but he was already a convergent ‘avant la lettre’: Catalan, from a business family, restless and active against the dictatorship and admirer of Jordi Pujol.
Pujol has just declared to Josep Cuní that he was always a nationalist but not an independentist. I think that’s the way it is, not so much for lack of desire but because, a great reader of history books, he knows that what can’t be, can’t be, and what’s more, it’s impossible. The political (not personal) question to Pujol would be why he did not say it before -from 2012 to 2017- thus contributing to a part of the country launching into something that he -he confesses- has not ended well at all. Rosell himself declared to Jordi Evole -and he insists in his statements to EL PERIÓDICO- that in a referendum he would vote in favor of independence, but the next day he would leave Catalonia. He says he would vote with his heart, but he lives with his head.
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But living from feelings is what liquidated a party like the CDC that -like it more or less- collected the feelings of a large part of the Catalan middle classes that have now been left without a loudspeaker. And a country needs both the left -there are three strong ones here (PSC, ERC and Comuns)- and a center-right with political and electoral authority.
Beyond politics, what happened to Rosell indicates that in Spain Justice is very improvable and that there are powers (not only state) that abuse their strength. Rosell still has the nerve to think of a managerial (not political) candidacy for mayor of Barcelona. I don’t know how he will fare, he doesn’t lack courage.