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Without a doubt there will be many people and especially the members of Fútbol Club Barcelona who do not know that, during the period from 1941 to 1975, the team had its offices in the Passage Méndez Vigo, located in the block of Calles Roger de Llúria, Consell de Cent, Pau Claris y Aragó, direction mar montaña.
The Méndez Vigo passage, which crosses a block of houses between Consell de Cent and Aragó streets, was designed in 1868.
The owners who had acquired those lands intended to build their mansions in the style of London passages, giving up a small part of their land to build a small communal service street.
The separation between the different plots and with the street itself would be separated with wrought iron bars on each property. And the passage would be closed at night with two doors that would prevent the passage of people outside the small neighborhood circle.
One of the first chalets that were built was built by Granell himself at number 1 in 1870 and belonged to the Catalan General Credit Society.
Another of the buildings built in 1886 was the House of the Italians, which used the building to house the Scuola Italiana and the Italian Institute.
The Barcelona Football Club, which had its offices for member procedures at Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, number 629, was looking for a new location so that members could carry out their transactions with greater capacity in a central location.
According to information, it was an employee of the club, Josep Cubells i Bargalló, who discovered that the villa that might be of interest was for sale in this passage.
They were bad times for the club, at the beginning of the 40s. The episode of the club president Josep Suñol i Garriga, deputy in Cortes for Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, still weighed on the memory of the dictatorship government.
In 1936, at the beginning of the war, during his stay in Madrid for reasons of his political work, the news spread that the republican forces had managed to take Alto del León, in the Sierra de Guadarrama. Suñol took 50,000 pesetas to go to the front and donate them to the forces that were fighting.
Suñol together with the journalist Pedro Ventura Virgili, an escort officer and the driver took the car and left in the direction of that place. A miscalculation caused them to surpass the republican lines and penetrate the coup plotters. This led to his arrest and subsequent shooting on August 6, 1936.
With the end of the civil war, Madrid had imposed Enrique Piñeyro Queralt, Marquis of La Mesa de Asta, as president of Barça. This, seeing the possibilities of the building, allowed the purchase and transfer of the club’s offices there in 1941.
Soon the venue was the preferred place for members to renew their cards and for all spectators to purchase tickets in advance, since its location prevented them from traveling to the Les Corts field.
In the 1960s, with the presidency of Francesc Miró-Sans, the offices moved to the old Via Laietana – today, Pau Claris -, number 180.
Initially, the Méndez Núñez passage offices remained open to members and spectators until October 26, 1975, two days later Barcelona opened the new Travessera de les Corts ticket offices.
The club, taking advantage of an offer from the Catalan Football Federation, sold the villa to said federation for 12 million pesetas. Later, the house was demolished and in its place a new building was built that has nothing to do with the construction principles that its pioneers had.
In this part of the city, modernity has also caused the disappearance of another historic building that only remains in the memory of those nostalgic for the old classic buildings and of the Barcelona fans who had the opportunity to meet it to process their connection with the club.
Nowadays, although the passage preserves part of the original constructions of the primitive one-story chalets with a garden patio at the entrance, other houses have changed their appearance in pursuit of the space that the era needs, losing a little of the old message. that London tickets offered.
The old stone pavement has been replaced by a more modern black basalt pavement that has unified the old pavement of the premises, which with the different actions carried out throughout its history had many different patches that gave it a somewhat unpresentable appearance.
The walls of the entrances have been restored, repairing the chips suffered by the passage of time from the separations between the community part and that of the private plots made by fences with a construction base topped by wrought iron bars.
The two iron doors at the entrances to the passage have also been completely restored, which continue to be closed to the public at night to protect the tranquility of the area and prevent possible acts of vandalism.
