Camp Nou Stadium

Camp Nou

The need for a new stadium

From 1948, people were more and more keen on the idea of building a completely new ground, but this was not an easy thing to do, and it was necessary to convince the local authorities that a new stadium would be able to fit in with the plans at the time to develop the upper area of the Diagonal.

What followed was a turbulent period, as the Camp Nou commission decided on February 9, 1951 to change the location of the future stadium to the area at the top of the Diagonal, and this led to a series of sterile negotiations with the Authorities that did not seem to be getting anywhere. The matter seemed to have been shelved for good when Francesc Miró-Sans won the FC Barcelona presidential elections on November 14, 1953. The new president was a fervent supporter of the idea of building a new stadium as soon as possible and one of the first things he did after coming into office on February 18, 1954 was to locate the future stadium on the site purchased in 1950, rather than at the top end of the Diagonal. And so, on March 28, before a crowd of 60,000 Barça fans, the first stone of the future Camp Nou was laid in place under the presidency of civil governor Felipe Acedo Colunga and with the blessing of the Archbishop of Barcelona, Gregorio Modrego.

The construction (1954-1957)

The architects of the new stadium were Francesc Mitjans Miró, cousin of Miró-Sans, and Josep Soteras Mauri, with the collaboration of Lorenzo García Barbón.

More than a year later, on July 11, 1955, the club commissioned the construction work to the INGAR SA company, who estimated the project at 66,620,000 pesetas, claiming it would take 18 months to complete. However, the stadium would eventually cost an awful lot more than the original estimate, eventually totalling around 288 million pesetas, an amount that would need to be covered by successive issues of mortgage obligations ((100 million pesetas) and short term bonds (60 million pesetas). This measure meant the construction of the stadium could be financed, but would leave the club in heavy debt for many years after.

Although work on the stadium was not yet complete, more than 90,000 spectators were able to witness the event, which continued with representatives of all the major football clubs in Catalonia parading on the pitch, as well as members of the club’s other sports teams and the supporters clubs. The new Stadium Anthem was then performed and the first game to be played at the Camp Nou kicked off at half past four in the afternoon.