The VAR referee Xavier Estrada Fernández will join the ERC list in the city of Lleida as number 5 for the municipal elections on May 28, according to the newspaper Segre. The referee, who left the playing fields in 2021, sued the former vice president of the Soccer Referees Committee (CTA) José María Enríquez and his son for sports corruption for receiving payments from FC Barcelona for advice.
The signing of Estrada Fernández by ERC will have to be endorsed by the party assembly next week, as explained by the formation's spokesperson, Marta Vilalta. Precisely because of this pending procedure, she has clarified that "it is not a final decision." If confirmed, Estrada Fernández could even become a councilor in the Paeria de Lleida, where the Republicans have seven representatives with the mayor Miquel Pueyo at the helm.
Vilalta has highlighted the future member of the ERC list as a "benchmark in the sports field of Lleida". Likewise, for the Republicans, the referee represents the "values" of "ethics and integrity" that the formation wants to transmit.
Estrada Fernández refereed 241 matches in the Spanish First Division of football, in addition to four matches in the Champions League and fifteen more in the Europa League. The man from Lleida retired as a field referee in mid-2021 and since then has been in charge of video arbitration (VAR) in different days.
The international referee was recently in the news as he was the only referee who sued the former vice president of the CTA José María Enríquez and his son for having received payments from Barça between 2001 and 2018, allegedly for advisory work.
Apart from the referee, Jordina Freixenet, second deputy mayor, will once again occupy second place in the Republican candidacy in the next elections, also according to Segre. The mayor's adviser Juanjo Falcó will be number 3 and Sandra Castro, lieutenant of Education, will be number 4.
After the 2019 elections, ERC broke with the dominance of the PSC in this city, which it had governed since the recovery of democracy except during a two-year hiatus (when there was a CiU mayor). Pueyo leads the city council with a pact with Junts, which has five councilors. In the proclamation of him as mayor, the republican also received the support of the commons.
