This is Capo Negreira.
At first I didn’t know who José María Enríquez Negreira was. As a member, I was part of the Lleida territorial delegation, and we lived outside of what was happening in the Barcelona delegation, where the vice president of the CTA had his headquarters. As the seasons passed, I rose through the ranks at the regional level. Then I started going to referee training camps for physical tests in Barcelona. Having reached the preferential I carried out these tests at the San Cugat High Performance Center and Henriques Negreira appeared there for the first time in my life.
Since I came into the judicial world, he He was already vice-president of the CTA and went to various rallies to mark the territory, always with a cigarette in his mouth. These meetings were technical in nature and explained how arbitration proceedings would be assessed at Catalan Committee level, as well as what regulatory changes were to be applied for this season. On some occasions, he even gave a welcoming speech in front of the participants. He was the “boss”, the one who was in charge, the one who made decisions, the one who was going to talk to President Victoriano Sánchez Arminio if necessary, and of course he wanted us all to know this and never forget it .
He returned with a Catalan assistant and told me: “You should take a small child as your assistant.” He was always there, present, trying to motivate you, condition you, no one dared to contradict him.
While I was refereeing in the third division, this was already visible. I went to whistle a game in Figueres, and they sent me to an informant very close to him, in particular, Martinez Alfonso. Does this sound familiar to you? He subsequently became known for cashing numerous checks for 3,000 euros from Henriques Negreira’s companies, on his direct instructions. This meant that all the information I gathered about my judging at that meeting was passed directly to the CTA Vice President. Again, he did this to make it clear who was heading the committee.
At the meeting we attended at the Holiday Inn in Madrid to participate in the examination for promotion to the second division B, three vice-presidents of the National Committee were present: Oscar Medin Prego, Angel Franco Martinez and José María Henriques Negreira. They were going to control and, in fact, give instructions on how to conduct tests. From this year I will contact him in all arbitration proceedings. In fact, he held technical talks with the judges until Manuel Diaz Vega was appointed technical director of the CTA, a decision he did not like at all because it took away his fame.
Enriquez Negreira, Franco Martinez, Raul Masso (CTA secretary) and Sanchez Arminio spent the entire day glued to the counter of a beach bar, drinking and smoking.
Before the start of the season, one of these meetings, a classic for Committee meetings, was organized at the Santemar Hotel in Santander. This four star hotel was very beautiful and well located next to the beach. Henriques Negreira, Franco Martinez, Raul Masso (CTA secretary) and Victoriano Sanchez Arminio spent the entire day glued to the counter of the beach bar. They drank and smoked for hours, and so on at all concentrations. Between the meetings of the First, Second and Second B, they spent almost a month in the king’s body, demonstrating their power.
He was the “boss”, the one who was in charge, the one who made decisions, the one who was going to talk to President Sánchez Arminio if necessary, and of course he wanted us all to know this and never forget it.
Henriques Negreira personally gave you the referee sheets at the matches. Everyone knew him, and everyone knew exactly what he did. Basically he controlled all the information from the national arbitrators, which was very interesting, and used it in the regional committees with good or bad intentions.. That is, to speak positively about the referee or to defenestrate him.
He was highly respected, his profile was similar to the previous ones. Because of the age difference, he could be my father. Everyone in the arbitration group knew that they could not approach him and ask him anything, since this could lead to negative consequences. Another year, when we were at the Santemar Hotel, after dinner we went for a walk around the area. When we returned, he was sitting by the door waiting for us. He returned with a Catalan assistant and told me: “You should take a small child as your assistant.” He was always there, present, trying to motivate you, condition you, no one dared to contradict him. In the CTA, those in charge say what they want, the rest listen. If you raise your voice, you’ll be thrown out, that’s clear. Each judge had his own strategy for dealing with this as best he could, and this was the system that prevailed in the National Committee.
Every time a referee was transferred from the second division to the first, Henriques Negreira called him and met with him in Barcelona. He invited me to dinner at a seafood restaurant with his partner, Ana, under the pretense that he was going to show me “how the First Division works.” He gave us a message about who is in charge and said that we should do things “as God commands,” that is, in our own way, as He wants. For him, there were three groups of First Division teams, which corresponded to three groups of judges. To whistle for teams from the first group (Madrid, Barça or Atlético Madrid), you had to be considered a referee from group 1., it’s so simple, otherwise you wouldn’t whistle these games in your life. No matter what I told you, it made you afraid.
He always told me that I should be grateful. From the very beginning, I had the feeling that they were not counting on me, because I was not like them, like the referees who made up their inner circle. This made them distrustful as they felt it was too legal and could get them into trouble.
He invited me to dinner at a seafood restaurant with his partner Ana under the pretense that he was going to show me “how Primera works” and told us that we should do everything “the way God intended.”
“Corruption Index”
The problem in the Technical Judicial Committee is systemic. It already existed when I started and continues to this day. I used to be more shameless and now they tried to disguise it to hide it, but it’s exactly the same. When you act as a judge in regional categories, your judging is controlled by informants. Who chose the informants? Well, the territorial delegate of your committee.
The figure of the referee-informant is key; I was assigned an informant who could neither read nor write.
The whistleblower figure is key to understanding the arbitration panel because they saw your arbitration, wrote the report, gave you an assessment, and passed all that information on to the committee. The district party assigned me an informant who could neither read nor write. No joke, my mother knew him all her life and was an elderly person. There was no minimum filter To select informants, the delegate on duty of your Committee appointed whoever he could, and that’s all. Not many people applied for this position. The people doing this work usually had no training or experience in the matter.