Barcelona want a public retraction from Florentino Perez. If he refuses to give one on the morning of November 25, they intend to take him to a criminal court.

The Real Madrid president is due at a Madrid court at 9:40am local time that day for a mandatory conciliation hearing, set by the judge at Barcelona’s request. The club filed the conciliation claim in June, a month after Perez’s May press conference, asking that his statements about the Negreira case be formally withdrawn as slanderous and damaging to the club’s reputation.

Conciliation is a mandatory step before a criminal action can be brought in Spain. If Perez does not appear, or appears but declines to retract, Barcelona have said they will file a criminal slander complaint under Article 205 of the Spanish Penal Code.

What Perez said in May

Speaking at a press conference on May 12, Perez tied Barcelona’s league titles directly to the Negreira payments.

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“We’ve been left empty-handed, and I’ve only won seven European Cups and seven league titles, which could have been 14 because they’ve been stolen from me,” he said.

Perez called the case “the biggest scandal in history” and told reporters that Real Madrid were preparing “a 500-page dossier that I’ll send to UEFA when the competition is over.” On the payments themselves, he said Barcelona had been “paying for two decades, but now it’s the same referees for this third decade.”

The Negreira background

The case centres on roughly €7 million paid by Barcelona to José María Enríquez Negreira, a former vice-president of Spain’s Referees’ Technical Committee (CTA), across almost two decades until 2018. Barcelona have said the money bought scouting and video reports on referees.

A Barcelona court dismissed the specific bribery charge against the club in May 2024, ruling that Negreira was not a public official under Spanish law and could therefore not be bribed in the legal sense. The wider investigation into sports corruption has continued, but no ruling has established that Barcelona’s payments actually altered any refereeing decision.

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What happens on November 25

Perez has two options at the hearing itself: sign a retraction of the “stolen titles” and “systemic corruption” claims, or force Barcelona to file the criminal complaint. Failing to appear would have the same effect as a refusal.

Barcelona’s next step in that scenario is already drafted: a criminal slander suit under Article 205, filed in Madrid, against the sitting president of Real Madrid.

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