In a club dominated by contradictions, it is to some extent normal that a field they call new (Camp Nou) is demolished for being old.
To tell the truth, the Barça stadium was already due for a comprehensive remodeling, what happens is that it is one thing to affirm it with an air of modernity and quite another to be invited inside to see how the works are taking place. Yesterday, a few journalists played privileged tourists, we crossed the forbidden areas with clothes borrowed for the occasion (robust shoes, safety helmet and reflective vest) and we entered an excursion that was as suffocating (with a temperature record) as it was shocking.
More than half a lifetime watching matches at the Camp Nou had accustomed our gaze and memory to a certain landscape that has been blown up. The cheesy who called it a coliseum are in luck. That is the feeling today. But where Rivaldo scored a goal with an earwig, Gladiator does not break in, but rather a Turkish worker and another Pakistani worker pondering. The perfect green of the grass has been replaced by stones or gravel, the image is of ground zero, of bombardment, but at the same time the activity is feverish.
There are now 400 workers in or around the stadium and will number around 2,000 when construction is in full swing. The hours from Monday to Friday are from eight in the morning to seven in the afternoon. On Saturdays, too, although in that case a permit from the district of Les Corts is necessary, as if the consent was demanded by a neighbor who loves bricomania with a spirit of solidarity. There must be someone. I rest on Sundays.
At one point in Turkey, the Limak construction company has hundreds of other workers working on gigantic prefabricated buildings that will fit into a kind of monumental lego. The pieces, like the cranes that will place them, will arrive by boat.
The third tier has been almost completely demolished. It will completely collapse because the project involves building a new one in its place. The skeletons of the first and second stands, original from 1957, will remain, but they can only be seen from the inside. From the outside, the stadium will look different, due to its aesthetics and, especially, its size.
The tour guides, Lluís Moya, director of the Espai Barça technical office, and Joan Sentelles, director of operations, answer all the questions sweating (because of the heat, the questions do not hide traps) on a rough terrain with which they have become familiar. “Watch out for the truck,” Sentelles warns us. Many travel at all hours and it is not a question of being run over in the act of duty by a heavy vehicle. We prefer other endings.
The figures they offer us describe the enormity of the project. 228,000 square meters of built land, 104,000 seats, two 360-degree VIP rings and, the most significant fact: compared to how we knew it, the volume of the Spotify Camp Nou will grow outward by 27 meters along its entire perimeter. In other words, the stadium will gain ground from the street to house terraces and integrated spaces in the front part of the stands that will be used by the fans. Likewise, the museum will not be an appendage to the building, but will form part of it, and the old Masia del gol norte will be a kind of diplomatic headquarters to receive the directives of visiting teams.
(I have the feeling that I have bombarded you with so much information and so many short sentences in such a short space. Perhaps in here, with so much activity, the rush to finish has infected me. Perhaps that is the big question: Will you give them time? This is the agenda: in November 2024, Montjuïc will return to the Camp Nou with some 70,000 seats already usable in the first and second stands, and in June 2025, 90 percent of the stadium will be finished in the absence of the VIP boxes. Camp Nou ready to pay tribute to Messi in September 2026, specifically on the 24th. On that same date the old Camp Nou was inaugurated).
We end as we began, with an oxymoron.
