businessman and former president of FC Barcelona, died this morning at the age of 71. The club confirmed this in a statement in which it regretted the death of the man who was institutional vice president of the entity from July 1, 2010 to October 1, 2017. He held the position of the Barça club on the boards of Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu.
Vilarrubí had an important role in the business world and in the political sphere. Closely linked to the beginnings of Convergència i Unió (CiU), he participated in the birth of Catalunya Ràdio when Jordi Pujol was at the head of the Generalitat. He served as general secretary and deputy director of the public broadcaster between 1983 and 1986.
Before joining Pujol’s entourage, he was a member of the Unió Democràtica de Catalunya from 1974 until the merger of both parties, positioning himself as a consensus figure until the 1980 parliamentary elections.
FC Barcelona, its president and the Board of Directors express their deepest condolences for the death of Carles Vilarrubí, institutional vice president of the Club from July 1, 2010 to October 1, 2017.
Linked to Barça from a very young age, he also defended the…
— FC Barcelona.
The businessman and former vice president was until now for payments to two companies owned by Jordi Pujol Ferrussola between 2004 and 2012.
Another notable episode was his resignation on October 1, 2017 after President Bartomeu and the men’s first team players skipped the board of directors’ agreement not to play the match against Las Palmas. When Bartomeu informed the squad that the match was not being played, the players said that they did not agree because the League would deduct a minimum of six points from them (they were leaders), and finally they opted to play behind closed doors.
He was the husband of the president of Coca Cola Europacific Parterns, Sol Daurella, a company that manufactures, bottles and distributes the famous brand in 28 countries in Europe, as well as Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands and Indonesia. He was awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi by the Generalitat in 2015. He has presided over the Catalan Academy of Gastronomy and Nutrition since 2016.
In addition to being a gourmet, Vilarrubí was passionate about ice hockey due to his close relationship in his youth with Puigcerdà, the capital of Cerdanya, a region of the Catalan Pyrenees. In the 1970s he served as a field hockey goalkeeper for the Atlètic Terrassa Hockey Club, a fact that catapulted him to the FC Barcelona team, which he finally left due to a series of injuries.
