Pepe Roses Juaneda, 1949-2025: The Man Who Ran the Referees
He refereed judo at two Olympic Games and organised the refereeing at two more. Twenty-three years running a regional federation, twenty-three years as national vice president. Almost nobody outside judo knows his name, which is exactly how officiating works.
- Born
- 1949
- Died
- 12 October 2025, Spain, age 76
- Full name
- José Onofre “Pepe” Roses Juaneda
- Roles
- President, Balearic Judo Federation (23 years); Vice President, Spanish Judo Federation (1993–2016); Secretary of Refereeing, International Judo Federation
- Olympics
- Refereed Barcelona 1992 and Atlanta 1996; organised refereeing for Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008
Roses directed Spain’s National Referees College and held the Cornelius Atticus prize. His death was announced by the Real Federación Española de Judo y Deportes Asociados and reported in the Balearic press under the headline “the historic leader of Balearic judo dies.”
What a school owner should take from Pepe Roses
Officiating is the least glamorous and most structurally important job in competitive martial arts, and this industry treats it as a favour extracted from whoever can be persuaded.
The reason it matters commercially: a tournament with inconsistent judging bleeds competitors, and competitors are the students who stay longest and spend most. Every owner who has watched a good family quit after a bad call at a local event has paid the price of amateur officiating. Roses spent a career building the system that prevents it — training, certifying and standardising the people in the middle.
If you run events, the officials are not overhead. They are the product.
Sources, and what we could not confirm
- Cause of death was not reported.
- The two 23-year tenures are not a transcription error — 1993 to 2016 is itself 23 years, coincidentally matching his time as Balearic president.
- Principal sources: the Real Federación Española de Judo announcement and Balearic press coverage, 12–13 October 2025.
Corrections and first-hand recollections are welcome and will be added with attribution.