2023-09-02 07:50:20
BarcelonaPaquita Linares is a soccer woman. It has been more than three decades that he has been seen on the playing fields and has won the recognition of Catalan clubs. But events in recent years have forced him to leave the Catalan Football Federation (FCF) through the back door and he has needed psychological help to move forward. Despite the trance, he finds strength to explain everything he experienced. He talks to the ARA about his time in the FCF with the nostalgia of being away from Catalan football and with the sadness and helplessness for the ordeal he experienced in recent years.
Linares began her career at Penya Barcelonista Cinc Copes, where she was coordinator, vice-president and organized the organization’s 50th anniversary. She then served as vice-president of AE Vallirana and promoted the club’s first women’s team. His work did not go unnoticed and in 2015 Andreu Subies, then president of the FCF, proposed that he become part of its board of directors. She carried out her function successfully until the arrival of Joan Soteras in the chair caused her to begin to suffer a series of situations that led her to resign in 2021 and to initiate legal actions against the vice president Josep Llaó, the general manager José Miguel Calle and Soteras himself, an extreme that the current leader of the Catalan state denied in an interview with ARA.
This newspaper has had access to the documentation processed in court and echoes the version of the complainant, who requested a conciliation act prior to the filing of a complaint for defamation. Their representatives understand that Llaó and Calle committed sexual harassment and Soteras workplace harassment.
Linares maintained a relationship with Llaó for a few years. When she decided to end the relationship, the manager did not take it well and began a systematic persecution that transcended the private sphere. Most of the board members sided with Llaó and Linares explains that she experienced “a very hostile environment”: “I was part of a board of 32 members and I was the only woman”, she says.
Since then there have been situations in which the complainant, as she explains, found herself “totally helpless”. When in board meetings he wanted to express his opinion, he had to hear someone say “Turn off the microphone” or “This soccer girl has no fucking idea”, or check that the same colleagues were not listening to him because they were having conversations parallels or entertained themselves by looking at the mobile phone, “as Soteras always did”.
“You are blacklisted and you will pay”
Linares also remembers how one day Llaó interrupted a meeting and got up from his chair, shouting, to scold him: “Why don’t you leave at once? Don’t you see that you’re not painting anything here?” She asked to be treated with respect, but neither President Soteras nor his colleagues intervened to stop the vice president’s inappropriate behavior. Llaó also took advantage of his status as a former referee to leave it in evidence at collegiate meetings, saying: “This one is against you, I don’t know why you let it be here”.
The former director of the FCF explains that one of the most hostile moments occurred in Marbella, where the play-off promotion of First and Second RFEF. Llaó had access to his mobile phone, due to the fact that it was a device provided by the FCF, and in front of witnesses he addressed him saying: “I have your mobile phone under control and I know who is calling you. Let it be known that you are on my blacklist and you will pay for it”.
Llaó’s attitude was seconded by other members of the Soteras team, such as José Miguel Calle, director general of the FCF, who addressed Linares by referring to his physique or the way he dressed: ” You’re scoring a lot today”, “What a cleavage and what breasts!” or “My mother, today you are a warrior!” ARA has had access to some audio where Calle says: “Before I fuck Paquita, I cut her off and throw her away”.
Another of the most embarrassing situations happened during a Christmas dinner. After the meal, several members of the Soteras board lifted Linares from her chair and placed her on the table to shouts of “Dance for us!” or “Sing something, move, we want to have fun!”.
Linares also remembers how during a Copa del Rey in the Basque Country, a fellow manager knocked on the door of his room in the wee hours of the morning to ask him if he had water. She denied him passage and warned him that he would speak to his wife the next day.
The ex-director communicated all these facts to Soteras, president of the FCF, who did not act to protect her. He explains that he felt “like a decorative little girl in a meeting with 31 other men” and denounces that “taunts, abuse and contempt” were allowed by the leader. In fact, she remembers that he told her: “Paquita, with a manager like you I already have twice as many women as I would like to have”.
Resignation on June 14, 2021
The pressures that Paquita Linares has received throughout the term of Joan Soteras have been repeated and constant. She highlights two moments that made her feel uncomfortable. The first: “In the middle of the pandemic, I was forced to convince the clubs to formalize the registrations when the Generalitat had already informed us that the competition would not resume”. And he adds, regarding other events: “They forced me to sign an agreement to going against former board colleagues through legal action, when I disagreed. She had neither a voice nor a vote, to the point that in order to send an email she was obliged to be reviewed and approved by the secretariat of the presidency”.
Linares said enough on June 14, 2021. He submitted his irrevocable resignation to Soteras and left the Baix Llobregat delegation and his directorship. In the letter addressed to the president, he states all the disdain and humiliation he has received from the board and “the nepotism of a Federation that forced it to accept a worker to be the husband of the director general’s cousin”.
It also states that “Joan Soteras makes sexist comments and actions against women’s football and that he acts against clubs that are not in his line”.
Soteras and his board members suspected that the resignation would be accompanied by a judicial complaint and sent a vice-president and a worker of the Federation, both presidents of their respective clubs, to visit Linares. The ex-director recalls: “They coerced me not to report, as it could harm third parties, and they also threatened me, assuring me that if I continued through the legal route I would have problems.”
Despite this, Linares initiated legal actions against Josep Llaó, José Miguel Calle and Joan Soteras.
The Federation fought back and sued Linares for embezzlement. They claim almost 90,000 euros in per diems, arguing that “all the trips he had made since 2015 he had not communicated to the president of duty”. The legal measures of Paquita Linares were presented on February 9, 2022 at the court of first instance in Barcelona and the conciliation act was held on May 11, 2022 and ended without an agreement. Contrary to what he said three days ago to this newspaper, Soteras has evidence of this procedure.
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