One can say that he is triquiet but then he has to prove it. Sometimes it is not enough to take a few boxes to the stage, because a touch of the microphone or rubbing your hands can ruin a whole statement. The president of Barça, for the lawyer and professor of non-verbal communication, José Luis Martin Ovejero, was "very brave or very unconscious. Laporta, far from being "tricalm", had to explain Negreira and therefore discharge the stress somewhere: "That's why he made manipulative or appeasing gestures, which are those that are produced by touching something." For example "the micro, or your own hands". Precisely the numerous times that they were "rubbed" caught the attention of the former director of TVE News and expert in "effective communication", Julio Somoano: "With that gesture the positive expectation that the speaker has in his audience is visualized. That is, he felt supported by his followers."

However, psychologist María Jesús Álava Reyes sees in that rubbing of hands a way to free yourself from sweating, "which is a sign that you are lying", as well as your "constant hyperventilation" or that you wet your lips: "It is a sign of anxiety".

Ovejero, for his part, detected two "aggressive" moments of the president. The first when he had a good time with his index finger stretched, in an "accusatory and inquisitor" plan, when he spoke of the "lynching" to which the club was being subjected. And the second when he gave a "small blow to the lectern" when talking about Real Madrid, which was also accompanied by "a microexpression of contempt" by raising his upper lip on the one hand: "That is that he considers that there is a moral superiority of Barcelona in this conflict, compared to the attitude that Madrid is having. "

Although if something caught the attention of all analysts was the presence of the four boxes of folios. For Ovejero: "A practical reinforcement in oratory that gives more solvency and weight to their arguments". Somoano's attention was drawn more to the Catalan and club flags, as well as the huge shield when answering questions from journalists. The objective: To defend the Catalanness of the club and its pride in "having contributed a lot to sport", as an "entity that brings together values", as Laporta himself said. "Unity, Catalanness and fair play. That is the triple purpose, what all his followers must join with their eyes closed. And when you manage to align your purpose with that of your audience, you have almost won the game," says Somoano.

The journalist believes that Laporta deliberately sought "polarization" using phrases such as "public lynching", saying that "nothing is casual", and pointing directly to Real Madrid, Tebas and all those who want to "appropriate the club". Laporta, according to Somoano, "repeats Lenin's strategy that there are only two sides, in this case with Catalanism and the club, or against them, with Laporta himself as the personification of the club." The criminologist and expert of the Spanish Association of Non-Verbal Communication (ASENOVE), Virginia Vargas, agrees on this: "Let everyone know who the victims are, and who the culprits and those who have a clear conscience."

To try to "convey security from the first moment", Laporta decided not to read his first statement, something that surprised Ovejero. The expert would be the first who in an appearance of this type would recommend to his client, "read it, or have it more scripted". The opposite, he says, is "being very brave or very unconscious, because the word can betray you and be proof of judgment."

It is true that Laporta had some pages, "but with a very small print and was not following the reading," says Ovejero. And even more courageous saw him when responding to journalists, "sitting and bare-chested", since "when you are more afraid of what may come upon you, you usually hide behind lecterns or a table". Their looks, says the expert, have not "been low, which are the ones that convey shame, guilt, regret, sadness."

He has also had, according to Ovejero, "illustrative gestures with his hands", which showed "security" in what was told, "since when one lies and it is costing him the first thing that paralyzes the body is the gestures". Not even, says the lawyer, there was trembling the times he took the pages: "I do not go into whether it is true or false, but he arrived with some arguments with which he considered himself very safe." He does not see it the same, Álava Reyes, who considers that this gesticulation came to "compensate for the language, the emptiness of his message".

In the same line of what Virginia Vargas thinks: "Not only does she believe in what she says but she wants everyone to know it." Even so, he could not avoid several lapsus linguae, "that is, saying the words wrong, which is often because of nerves." For example, every time he faced the word "honorability".

  • Joan Laporta
  • FC Barcelona
  • Real Madrid
  • Negreira Case

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