Barcelona, Atletico de Madrid, Valencia and Sevilla are among eight La Liga clubs who will have all transfer activity monitored by the Spanish state after activating ERTEs.
An ERTE is Spain’s temporary redundancy scheme which is activated by the state of emergency within the country, with businesses losing access to their profits.
It subsequently means that businesses rely on state aid to pay their employees with eight top-flight clubs – Alaves, Granada, Espanyol and Osasuna are the others – who took advantage of the scheme.
As outlined by Diario AS, the transfer activity of all eight clubs will now need to be sanctioned by the Spanish state with the Ministry of Labour and Finance inspecting all the finances.
Other clubs, such as Real Madrid, Real Sociedad and Real Betis, have not used ERTEs and have agreed salary reductions within their senior football ranks without impacting other areas of the club.
There are also five clubs in the Women’s Primera that have made use of ERTEs, along with ten clubs from the men’s Segunda division and a further 41 clubs from the Segunda B – Spain’s regionalised third tier.
The sharp drop in income as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic has a huge impact on all football clubs, with fans not expected to be back in stadiums for another year – with a return date of football still unclear.
