By 1920, football had already spread throughout Catalonia. As J. Garcia Castell explains in his laborious História del Futbol Català, “if in some places there was not an officially established club, it would not take long to form one”. And then came the great consolidation: the Barcelona inauguration of Les Corts in 1922 and a year later Espanyol’s new playground: Sarrià. It happened a hundred years ago and paved the way for the dominance of Catalan football in the major competitions. Between 1925 and 1929, five of the eight disputed Spanish titles stayed in Barcelona. Barça won the Cup three times (1925, 26 and 28) and the first League in history (29). Espanyol won the 1929 Cup.
The construction of Sarrià was an obstacle course. Since 1911, Espanyol had leased the land on Calle Muntaner, between the aforementioned street and the Casanova, Indústria (now Paris) and Coello (now London) roads, adjacent to the current Velódromo bar. Barcelona played in this same field between 1905 and 1909.
Espanyol was warned of eviction and needed a new field and not just any one, because Barcelona grew unbridled in Les Corts.
Legend has it that one day Joan Gamper and the blue and white president Genaro de la Riva were in the barbershop, both with soapy faces and without identifying who was occupying the other chair, they held a dialogue that the blue and white historian Juan Segura Palomares relates as follows:
–Things have turned out very badly for Espanyol –said Gamper– I think that this time they have definitely died. They have kicked him out of the Muntaner field…
De la Riva got up excited and faced the next seat:
–You are very wrong, Mr. Gamper. As long as I live, Espanyol will live… and if he doesn’t have a pitch, don’t worry: I’ll buy him one!
This is how Sarrià’s project was born and also one of the most recurring conflicts in the history of Espanyol: ownership of the playing field and relations with the De la Riva family, who presided over the club in up to eight different stages.
Once the land was obtained, on the so-called Can Ràbia farm on the Sarrià road, the first stone was laid on December 31, 1922 and in less than two months, on February 18, 1923, the first match was held, a Espanyol-Sants of the Catalan Championship (4-1).
The project was signed by the architect Matías Colmenares. A 108×65 meter field, with stands for 35,000 spectators, surrounded by palm trees (which earned it the name of La Manigua for the Xut pranksters) and a building on the south goal, the Can Poc Oli farmhouse, which was preserved and passed to be known as the chalet. It resisted until 1951.
But not everything could be fulfilled. The construction company went bankrupt and the inauguration of Sarrià was carried out with a capacity of barely 10,000 spectators, with hardly any stands. It was reached from the Diagonal after crossing an area of ??vegetation and leafy forest.
Sarrià was perfected and expanded throughout its existence. When President Manuel Meler carried out the last major remodeling (42,000 seated spectators) he correctly defined his work: “We have a candy box”.
The debts forced the sale of Sarrià and the construction of flats. The last game was played on Saturday, June 21, 1997, an Espanyol-Valencia game on the last day of the League. Sarrià closed its doors after almost 75 years of life. In the memory, unique days. That of February 10, 1929, when Pitus Prat scored the first goal in the entire history of the League. Or the European qualifiers, including the one that seemed definitive against Leverkusen (3-0, on May 4, 1988), the celebrated promotions, the presence of cracks like Kubala and Di Stéfano in the blue and white shirt, the oxygen campaign, the magic of the 5 Dolphins, the unrepeatable matches of the 1982 World Cup…
An exhibition in Calle Bellesguard in Barcelona allows these days to remember the hundred years of Sarrià.
