At the Council of Ministers held at the Pazo de Meirás on August 13, 1965, the urban modification of the grounds of Les Corts was authorized. The decree definitively approved a building that the Blaugrana club had been requesting for years, as a more direct formula to wipe out the debt accumulated with the construction of the Camp Nou. This decision is mentioned insistently as an indisputable example of Franco’s favoritism with FC Barcelona, ​​but all the nuances, of which there are many, surrounding the famous decree of 1965 are usually ignored.
The Courts The land that Gamper bought on February 8, 1922 for the construction of Les Corts did not have any special urban planning qualification. As Manuel Tomà s points out in Les Corts and Barça, “the club could have built floors there perfectly”. They became a green area in much later urban plans. Even in 1929 part of the Barça land was expropriated by the City Council for the urbanization of the area.
Camp Nou. On September 27, 1950, the board of Agustà Montal Galobart signed the first option to purchase land in the area adjacent to the Maternity Hospital. (Incidentally, it was still seven months before Kubala’s official debut). Later, more estates were added, to give the future stadium as much space as possible. All those lands were located in an area widely suitable for building. There was even a plan that indicated where the streets that would connect Diagonal with the Travesera de les Corts would pass. One passed roughly through the central circle of Camp Nou. A decree of the Ministry of Government of June 6, 1949 established the urbanization, expropriations and other details of that area “on GeneralÃsimo Avenue”.
the delay The foundation stone of Camp Nou was laid on March 28, 1954 and construction did not begin until July 20, 1955. A delay that harmed Barcelona and that cannot be attributed solely to the club, but to murky outside interests that are never mentioned. To begin with, in February 1951 an official commission, with the national delegate of Urbanism, City Council officials and the president of the Spanish Federation, visited the area and advised against building the stadium in that area. Pressure began on the club to look for another location, and years were wasted trying to get a swap with the Melina tower land, in the area where the Juan Carlos I hotel was later built. In October 1952 until and everything came to sign an agreement to that effect, but it was paralyzed because it lacked the approval of the university officials, also affected. On this point, the Minister of Education, JoaquÃn Ruiz-Giménez, was adamant. Barça was also hurt by the arrival of new technicians at the City Council who, instead of moving forward with the file in progress, wanted to start from scratch. The tension grew and in March 1953 the vice-president NarcÃs de Carreras threatened to denounce to public opinion those responsible for slowing down the project. Finally, on February 18, 1954, with Miró-Sans in the presidency, the initial proposal, the Maternity area, was returned. Three years had been lost.
The works. The construction stage was not easy either. The lack of iron and cement and even electrical restrictions complicated the work and skyrocketed the expected cost, which in a first estimated budget amounted to 66 million pesetas. (Let’s pass by the facilities that Madrid had with the materials for the new ChamartÃn). In a report presented to the Barcelona board, it was pointed out that of the 1,500 bags of cement per day, barely 200 arrived.
The counterpart From the inauguration of the Camp Nou to the decree that allowed the construction of Les Corts, 8 years passed during which the club survived suffocated by debts. In the municipal meeting of August 4, 1962, the club’s request was approved, but then, as was recalled in La Vanguardia in August 1965, “the file went to Urbanism and had a very long procedure , in the course of which the law of December 2, 1963 was promulgated” by which “any modification made to the green areas must be approved by the Council of Ministers”. Another obstacle. Finally, the club achieved the requalification of 20,000 square meters of Les Corts, but it is never remembered that five times more, approximately one hundred thousand of the extensive area of ​​the Camp Nou, lost their buildability.
The comparison Barcelona’s urban planning operation has not been, by any means, the only one. In a “non-exhaustive” report by El PaÃs in 2006, it was pointed out that clubs such as Madrid, Valencia, Levant, Zaragoza, Sevilla, Betis, Murcia and Valladolid “maintain their signings thanks to the brick”. Espanyol reduced its debt with the requalification of Sarrià . But the most scandalous case was that of Real Madrid with the requalification of its Ciutat Esportiva, a plot of 142,000 square meters that the Madrid City Council had expropriated in 1960 so that the white club could have its training area and for which he paid just 11 million pesetas with the commitment that it would always be used for sports. It was the base of Madrid of the Galacticos.
