Girona once performed surprisingly, but I was also not too surprised when in the next season they showed a decline again, or in the event they could not maintain the good performance they showed before. That happened because of several things in my opinion, one of which is their mentality is not fully ready to be able to compete with teams that are usually in the top flight.
In fact, it's not only in La Liga that this kind of thing happens, in the Premier League the same thing happens where in one season there is a team that was not predicted before that can actually give the best in their game.
Underdogs like Girona have so many difficulty to maintain their success, but they can make it like Sevilla in Spain or Atalanta, Napoli in Serie A, or Dortmund, Leipzig in Bundesliga. But after a first successful season, these underdogs usuallly have considerable down before their good strategic development can work in long term.
With time, if they have good development strategy in player transfers to salary ceiling of the club and good scout teams to bring good youth players to the club, they will have very sustainable competitiveness. Girona don't reach to that stage but they can try and they can achieve it in future several seasons.
To call Real Madrid signed Mbappe without paying the fees is totally wrong. Did you forget Mbappe's signing fees worth 150mio++?
Talking bout Barcelona, they are a broken club, they're bad financially. they have no clue how to manage their financial better. Their management deserved to be jailed. They're nothing without being funded. lol
In contrast with Madrid, which is financially well managed by Perez. This is the key how they can always survive in any of difficult situation. Unlike Barcelona, which may go bankrupt if they keep suffer financial lose.
Real Madrid and Barcelona are traditional competitors and Real Madrid got Mbappe, Barcelona got Olmo in return. Barcelona can not watch Real Madrid getting Mbappe and do nothing even their finance are very dangerous. By trying to compete with Real Madrid, Barcelona took more risk on transfer market, made their finance worse and in next few years, I expect Real Madrid winning over Barcelona.
Bad things have happened to Barca, so far 20 executives have been sacked or resigned. Laporta said in December that his decision to 1:1 La Liga was not implemented, which angered La Liga and caused investment to stop going to Barca. The club's directors hoped to attract sponsors to improve the situation and buy better players by ignoring 1:1, but after losing the previous two cases and La Liga's refusal to buy Barca, sponsors have moved away from the club. Laporta does not believe in planning and is keen to solve the problems emotionally. The club used to be run by the best, but now it is run by the president's family & friends and Relatives. There are also rumors of brokering at the management level. I think it is likely that, like Koeman and Xavi, they will again blame the coach, not Laporta and his management team.