Friday 30 June 2023. Barça TV studios, located since the 2018-2019 season in Sant Just Desvern, very close to the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper. And the Farmhouse, where it all begins. In the case of the television channel, where it all ends. For financial reasons the club took the decision to close it after 24 years. Sad and melancholy, some canal workers receive this newspaper dressed in black. It is the slogan for the last day of a television that was born in July 1999 in the final years of Josep Lluís Núñez’s mandate. The then president was looking for a connection that would bring him closer to the partner and that came to an end yesterday. The 94 workers at Barça TV have known about the decision since April. There will be those who say that they have had time to come to terms with the idea. No one has succeeded.
“My contract is from July 15, 1999. It is the oldest in television”, explains Àngels Prieto, a journalist who has little left to do in what has always been his home. “The first broadcast test was done in the last League game at the Camp Nou of the 1998-99 season. A Barça-Betis with Barça already champions of the League under Van Gaal. That day they offered the title to the fans. We did a 12-hour program,” explains Àngels. She was the first presenter of the news programs that have accompanied Barcelona fans for 24 years. They have never changed their name. They have always been Barça. BN for workers.
Two days later, Sonia de Alba signed the second contract in the channel’s history. “Good luck and success”, he always says to every editor who sets foot in the newsroom. “The first thing I did was a report on FCB Botiga. On July 27, everything started”, explains De Alba, a journalist passionate about the sections of the club, especially basketball, who remains close to ex-coach and ex-player Aíto García Reneses and Pau Gasol. “They helped me a lot. You would meet them every day simply by crossing the ice rink”, he explains, recalling the time when the channel was located at the Camp Nou. “I remember that we started editing in facilities that were next to TV3 because they were knocking on the walls at the Camp Nou. At the end of June 1999 we settled in some temporary modules. You did not understand how after 10 days it could be issued. But it was like that”, he remembers. Àngels’ anecdotes fall out of his pockets. “My first trip to the Champions League was in 2000 against Sparta Prague. When we came back I couldn’t find my passport. I became hysterical. I turned around and Kluivert was laughing. He had opened my backpack and taken it out. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship”, explains the presenter. “I have done everything. I even narrated a match that Barça C played against Lorca because the narrator failed. I asked them to put the locution in Catalan to guide me because I didn’t know anyone”, he says. The Catalan voice was that of David Puig, known as Mestre Puig for his ancestry and ability to teach since July 20, 1999. His voice has been the one that has accompanied the spectators in thousands of narrations. “I was 34 years old. He was the oldest of them all. He had just been director of Ràdio Sant Feliu. The beginnings were tough. We didn’t rest in a month”, he remembers. “I have done everything. Boss, editor, announcer, editor… But I remember above all the Champions League in Rome 2009 that we won at Manchester United. I narrated it from there with Òscar Garcia Junyent as commentator. And to think that it all started because my mother went to Josep Pons’ hairdresser… He was a good friend of Domènec Garcia, Núñez’s head of press. He told my mom that they were looking for people, to send the resume. And I went in”, he recalls.
Six months later Jaume Marcet landed there. The voice of the Farmhouse. He was called by another historian of the channel, Chus Carrillo. “I think that thanks to Barça TV, people have discovered that football goes beyond the first team and the subsidiary”, he explains. Its beginnings were with Àngels Prieto al Tot Barça, a program dedicated to grassroots football and the seed of the well-known Promises, which was broadcast every Tuesday from March 2004 until last year. “The first match I narrated was that of a Cadet A of a certain Iniesta”, says Marcet.
And Messi? “Messi plays in Argentina thanks to Barça TV. His representative at the time, Horacio Gaggioli, asked me to make him a summary with his images and they sent them. Obviously they summoned him”, explains Jaume. Next to him, journalists who have lived a life at Blaugrana like Laura Aparicio, Miriam Nadal, Mario Robert or Meritxell Infante nod. Others have been there for less, such as Carla Garcia, voice of the women, Marc Brau, of the men, or Pol Martínez, who presented the penultimate news at 3:00 p.m. Always thanks to the help of the television cameras, technicians and councillors. The one at 8 pm with Llorenç Tarrés was the last news. To close the channel, shortly before midnight, the workers prepared a five-minute report to say goodbye. Then Barça TV faded to black.
