TALENT LEFT UNRECOGNISED

· Ref.: CB Grup Barna / 8M 2026 / FCBQ Women's Basketball Project

Dear President of the FCBQ,

CB Grup Barna is a youth basketball club founded in 1965 in the Clot neighbourhood, in Barcelona's Sant Martí district. Over 61 unbroken years, we have built one of Catalonia's most advanced models of investment in women's basketball: 50% of our budget goes to the women's game, when the sector norm is 35%.

Today, to mark International Women's Day (8 March 2026), we write to you and to the FCBQ's Board to set out a structural problem affecting hundreds of young Catalan women and to propose a club-federation model of collaboration that can reverse it.

We have 38 active women coaches who every week develop players, break stereotypes and make our model possible. None of them, however, holds a federation licence: not because they could not, but because the cost and the timetable make it impossible. As far as the FCBQ's statistics are concerned, they simply do not exist.

We ask the Catalan Basketball Federation to recognise them and help them take that step. It is not a cost; it is an investment with a direct, measurable return in equality, in technical training and in the strength of youth women's basketball in Catalonia.

Yours sincerely,
CB Grup Barna

· The paradox of the FCBQ Mentoring Programme

Designed for those who have already solved the problem

To take part, coaches must hold a Level 0, 1, 2 or Advanced qualification. The programme designed to give opportunities to coaches who have not become professionals excludes precisely the coaches who have not been able to become professionals.

· The Barna Method

The name the system was missing

The Barna Method is not a document or a programme. It is the name that was missing for what the club has already been doing for 61 years, but had never articulated as an exportable system.

• ① Inverted investment — The club devotes 50% of its budget to women's basketball: a strategic commitment that forces the women's model to be high quality. Investment creates expectation, expectation creates standard, standard creates role models.
• ② The pipeline — Players do not leave the club when they stop playing: they become coaches, many of them running boys' teams. That cycle (escoleta → development → competition → technical staff) is what makes the club "generate female leadership" and not only "have women's teams".
• ③ The community effect — The predominantly female audience on social media is not the result of a campaign: it is the organic consequence of the two principles above.

Without a name, the Barna Method is invisible. A name turns anecdotes into a system, a system into a methodology, a methodology into an institutional and communicative asset. With the concept articulated, the club can present itself to institutions — the FCBQ, the City Council, the Generalitat, the FEB — not as "a club that does things well", but as "the creator of a replicable model".

CB Grup Barna has partly broken this circle by taking on former players as coaches. But without a licence, that pipeline is invisible to the federation system and its statistics.

What CB Grup Barna proposes: not requiring a qualification to access support, but providing support to obtain the qualification.

· Real examples from the technical ecosystem

• Lucía Morales → entrenadora Mini Blanc Masculí
• Nadia Jiménez i Cuca Larrosa → staff Cadet A Femení
• Clàudia Adelantado i Paula Cubel → staff Pre-Mini A Femení
• Laia Sadurní → Pre-Mini Vermell Femení · Marta Trujillo → Infantil Negre Femení
• Marina García → Infantil Negre Masculí

None of them can join the FCBQ Mentoring Programme for lack of a prior qualification.

· 6.2 What the system does not count but exists

When the FCBQ publishes statistics on federated women coaches in Catalonia, CB Grup Barna's 38 women coaches do not appear. Not because they do not exist: because they have no licence. Catalonia reports figures for women in technical roles that are lower than reality. Sports policy is designed on incomplete data.

· Summary in three sentences

• ① Create an FCBQ Grant Fund to pay for the licences of the 38 women coaches who are already working. Investment with an immediate return: 38 new federated coaches.
• ② Change who can join the Mentoring Programme: from "those who already hold a licence" to "those who already coach".
• ③ Turn the CB Grup Barna model into a replicable policy for every neighbourhood club in Catalonia.

· Replicability for the FCBQ and Catalan youth basketball

The CB Grup Barna model is replicable for any youth club in Catalonia willing to invest in the women's game, with a full age-group pathway and former players ready to make the transition to coaching. Profile of a replicable club:

• 150–500 federated members, 10–25 active teams
• Significant female representation in every age group
• Former players connected to the club and willing to coach
• Institutional will to prioritise women's basketball

The federation has a unique role: creating the regulatory framework and the fund of resources. Without the FCBQ, the CB Grup Barna model is an anecdotal exception. With the FCBQ, it can be the new standard for youth women's basketball in Catalonia.

· Formal request to the Catalan Basketball Federation

1. That the FCBQ create a Grant Fund for qualifying active coaches without a licence, with an initial allocation covering the Level 0 Sports Coach Course, on a club-federation co-funding model (proposal: 30% club / 70% FCBQ, or 100% FCBQ for small clubs).
2. That the Women's Coach Mentoring Programme change its entry criterion to include active coaches without a prior qualification, replacing the "prior licence" requirement with real, verifiable activity at a federated club.
3. That CB Grup Barna act as the model's documented pilot club to make its replication at other Catalan clubs easier, with FCBQ certification as a "Reference Club in Women's Technical Development".
4. That the FCBQ set up a transitional register of coaches in training to count the real female technical talent and produce statistics reflecting the true situation of women's basketball in Catalonia.