A year and fifteen days after Luis Rubiales’ resignation, there will finally be quadrennial elections for the assembly and the presidency of the Royal Spanish Football Federation. If there are no further delays, as required by law, the elections must be held before the end of the current Olympic cycle, which ends on December 31, 2024.
After the Administrative Court of Sport (TAD) last Thursday aborted the last failed attempt to call elections for president alone in order to try to further delay the process, the acting president María Ángeles García Chaves, known as Yaye, and the RFEF board of directors opted this Wednesday to apply the ministerial order that regulates elections in sports federations. First, the updated census will be published, which will take almost a month. Then, the regulations require the current board of directors to be transformed into a management committee that will be made up of six members of the board of directors and another six from the delegated commission. From this dozen members, the president of the management committee must emerge, who must start the electoral process. First, there will be elections to choose the 140 assembly members who will later vote on the election of the president for the 2024-28 Olympic cycle. According to sources close to the federation, the intention is for García Chaves, wife of the former secretary of the disqualified Pedro Rocha in the Extremaduran territory, to preside over the management committee to control the process from within.
Rocha remains determined to preside over the federation despite being banned for two years by the TAD for having exceeded his functions when he chaired the management committee that was set up after Rubiales’ resignation. In order to be able to stand for election, Rocha has already requested a precautionary measure to stop his sanction and it was denied. The Extremaduran leader intends to request a new one as soon as the four-year elections are called. In addition, Rocha remains indicted in the framework of Operation Brodie, in which Judge Delia Rodrigo is investigating alleged irregularities in federation contracts. Rocha has been president of the federation’s economic commission since 2020 and during that period the addenda were signed that allowed Gerard Piqué to receive commissions worth more than 20 million euros for taking the Spanish Super Cup to Saudi Arabia.
Rocha said he knew nothing about the addenda, although his signature appears in one of the minutes. This caused Judge Delia Rodrigo to change his status from witness to defendant in just half an hour of testimony. According to the magistrate’s order, Rocha neither called the economic commission to study the addenda nor requested the file despite his position. He committed the same dereliction of duty with the award of the remodelling works at the La Cartuja stadium, granted to Gruconsa, a company where the brother of Pedro González Segura, former director of the RFEF’s legal services, works. Rocha removed González Segura from his position when he was charged, however he did not apply the same decision to himself.
If the Extremaduran leader obtains the precautionary measures, he would have the support of the majority of the regional barons who want to maintain their salaries, between 70,000 and 100,000 euros a year. If he does not obtain the precautionary measures, and pending the officialisation of external candidates, the great favourite is the Andalusian baron Pablo Lozano, but he does not currently have the support of the majority that Rocha does.
