Agusti Montal, a voyage from dictatorship to freedom

The cycle of life serves us to remember that Barcelona is a unique club. Agusti Montal died on Wednesday, the president of Barcelona between 1969 and 1977, eight critical years during which he constructed an essential part of what today is the club. On his CV in letters of gold, will be the face he signed Johan Cruyff, in part because he had the intelligence to surround himself with brilliant people. Because if he signed Cruyff it was also because previously he had signed Armand Caraben, who was crucial to the operation, and other influential people in Catalan society. 

But the reign of Montal will be rememebred too because he helped make it so La Liga allowed foreign players and he was the first president to reimpliment the use of Catalan inside the club. It was used on the megaphone despite being forbidden, during a game against Deportivo on September 3, 1972. An episode that upset the Francoist authorities, who reacted badly and prohibited it until the dictator died.

Under Montal the club won just one league title but that was nothing more or nothing less than Cruyff's, won in a political context in a society so extreme and hostile that it counts for multiple. Montal had the enormous courage to act as if the club were already in a normal country, with Cruyff in the field and Catalan in the stands. He took over a club drowning in the pressure of a sinister dictatorship and left it prepared to live in freedom and democracy. Barcelona must be eternally grateful.