“It’s nice to remember things”, he exhales after 38 minutes on the phone. Barto Pagès, born in 1954 in Sant Jaume de Llierca, he remembers well the only two precedents against Cacereño, this evening’s opponent in the Copa del Rey. They were in the 1978-79 season and in Segona B: a 2-1 defeat in Extremadura and a clear victory in Montilivi (3-0). He was the author of the third goal in the Girona match. “He scored often. I was the team’s top scorer the three years I played in Segona B”, he explains. And even more: “If you look on the internet for Girona’s historic goalscorers in First, Second and Second B, Stuani comes out (105), who has broken all the records, and I am second (37)”.
That year 1978-1979 Girona played, and lost, in the Cup against Valencia of the Argentine Mario Kempes, who just a few months earlier had lifted the World Cup. “I looked at him as an idol and after the game we all went to shake his hand. These days I saw it on TV, in Qatar, and I was thinking, who has seen it and who sees it. Now it is well fixed. He used to be disheveled and with a mane down to the middle of his back. I saw it and thought I’ve played with this one. They are anecdotes and things that stay with you forever”, he sighs.
He talks about his time with emotion. And especially when the name of defender Josep Serra, who died in 2008, comes up. “It’s a coincidence: a town of 700 inhabitants and two players at Girona”. “When we went to train, we took the shotgun, the fishing rod, the net for catching quail or the basket of mushrooms in the car and sometimes we stopped along the way”, he remembers. More than once they had taken Javier Subirats, later a legend in Mestalla: they called him paiella because he came from Valencia. Often the training was running up the mountain. “There was a coach who told us that during the week we would only see the ball in the bowl because that way on Sunday we would be more eager to touch it”, laughs Pagès.
They were already professionals in Segona B, but it wasn’t like it is now: “I might have earned twice as much as a worker, but of course, I knew that was coming to an end. It was not for living or retiring. It was a living wage. If it was now… Then we would all do something else. I would help my father and he would give me something». When he was a child, his father was a collector of Banco Espanyol de Crèdit: “He was like a bank correspondent. Now everything is done online, but before it was very different: I went to houses and shops to collect the receipts and then I went to take the money to the banks.’ When he was already an adult, his father sold feed and did insurance and he helped him. His first car was a red R-5.
Looking back, he continues: “When we went to play south, we left on Fridays at three in the afternoon. We spent the night in Zaragoza, Castelló or wherever needed and on Saturday we just arrived and slept there. On Sunday we played and returned to Girona, with a single driver. He would fall asleep and the coach would make us each spend half an hour next to him to distract him. We had a spray bottle to throw water on his face so he wouldn’t fall asleep and we were going crazy. If not, we would have had a windfall (sic) that we would not have heard of Girona any more”, he recalls. “I liked going by bus, a lot. Once we had to vote in the dressing room if we wanted to go by bus or by plane and everyone voted for the plane because in an hour you’re in Seville or wherever, but I voted for the bus. And they wanted to kill me. I liked it, because that way I could look out the window. You passed through the Meseta, through La Mancha, through Andalusia, and you saw hills, some deer, many partridges. I really like animals because I’m a forest person and I had a blast. I really liked him”, adds Pagès, who worked for a feed company until his retirement and was a technician at Sant Jaume de Llierca for many years. “I’m from Sant Jaume and Girona,” he emphasizes.
He became a member of Girona coinciding with promotion to Segona A (in 2008) and sees all the games from the Montilivi stand, happy to be now in the First Division: “I thought it was impossible. And nothing is impossible in this world. I would never have thought of it.” His two grandchildren, aged 8 and 5, “are already from Girona. They wear the shirt with his name on it.’ He laughs: he and his wife gave them away. He plays football with them when they go to see them: “The other day I wanted to dribble one and I sprained myself and was half lame for three or four days”.
