BARCELONA, Spain — It is election season in Catalonia, and the most anticipated race will have all of the expected ingredients: charges of corruption, fringe challengers, improbable campaign promises and blatant pandering to voters (free haircuts, anyone?).
The winner will not be a government official but rather the next president of F.C. Barcelona, a position that comes with more clout, some residents argue. Barcelona is among the most recognizable and valuable brands in sports. Given that, the club, and thus its president, sometimes serves as the public face of Catalonia itself.
Yet while virtually every major sports organization around the world relies on an owner or a board of directors to select its top leaders, Barcelona, which is owned by its roughly 160,000 members, continues to opt for a more old-fashioned methodology: paper, envelopes and a whole bunch of ballot boxes.