Florentino Perez<\/a> won Real Madrid\u2019s first contested presidential election in two decades, securing another four-year term.<\/p>\n![\"Florentino](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/download.-1..jpeg\")
Florentino Perez recently won Real Madrid\u2019s presidential elections (AP)<\/p>\n
In the run-up to Sunday\u2019s vote, Perez had said he would spend 150 million euros on an unnamed player to be revealed on Tuesday, a fee that would represent a club record.<\/p>\n
The 79-year-old Spanish construction magnate was acclaimed as the winner by Real Madrid TV, while his rival, renewable energy tycoon Enrique Riquelme, conceded defeat a little over one hour ahead of the official tally.<\/p>\n
Perez won 65% of the vote, the club’s official count showed, while Riquelme took 35% of a total of 33,555 members who voted at Real’s Valdebebas training ground on the outskirts of Madrid on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“I would like to congratulate Florentino Perez’s campaign on its victory. Real Madrid will not go another 20 years without an election,” Riquelme told reporters.<\/p>\n
Perez called the election on May 12 despite having two years left on his mandate, after a second straight season without silverware for the record 15-times European champions and with arch-rivals Barcelona retaining their LaLiga title.<\/p>\n
He declared the result “extraordinary” in a victory speech at a hotel in the Spanish capital and said Real had “set an example to the world of transparency and harmony”.<\/p>\n
“This has been a great day for Real Madrid. We have won across the board, that is to say, across all age groups. And we have achieved the second-best result in the history of Real Madrid elections,” Perez said.<\/p>\n
Perez first became Real president in 2000 and had renewed his mandate five times since 2009 by running unopposed. The club had not held a formal presidential vote since 2006, when Ramon Calderon won by a narrow margin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[179,6276,6278,5442,11178,223,8539,5441,674,82,6279,11177,5448,17915,1743,17,314,1236,8538],"class_list":["post-37568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-madrid","tag-atletico-madrid","tag-barcelona-spain","tag-club-soccer","tag-color-image","tag-estadio-olimpico-lluis-companys","tag-fc-barcelona","tag-first-leg","tag-horizontal","tag-julian-alvarez","tag-madrid","tag-match-sport","tag-olympic-stadium","tag-photography","tag-quarterfinal-round","tag-soccer","tag-spain","tag-sport","tag-uefa-champions-league","tag-union-of-european-football-associations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}