Realistic for Barcelona right now signing player with free agent, they don't have to pay payment fees transfer and Barcelona just negotiation with contract duration then how much salary will pay.
Barca are always interested in quality players even when they know it will be impossible for them to get. They want to try every possible to uplift them team back to the way it used to be but to do that you need finance to add high quality players to the team. They should rest for now and focus on building their current players and their academy players instead of trying to acquire players they can’t afford and in the end it may result to salary cut of some players in order to pay the wages of these players.
I agree more with the mindset as you said because at the moment Barcelona finances are really bad and maybe the best way is to improve by recruiting academy players and educating these young players so they can have strong new talents and if that works Barcelona can sell those player and recover their finances for the next few seasons. so Barcelona should be more patient without star players for the next few seasons and try to use this strategy to improve their finances.
maybe this method will not guarantee it, but at least with this mindset it can help restore Barcelona finances a little.
and right now it looks like some of the new players recruited by Barcelona are getting for free from the transfer market, well at least they can strengthen some of the line-up even though they are not as strong as the star players.