60 years since Les Corts stadium was demolished
4 February 1966 was a very sad day for Barça supporters. On that winter Friday, the demolition of the old and beloved Estadi Les Corts began, bringing to a close almost 44 years of Barça history at a ground that had been inaugurated on 20 May 1922, in the legendary era of Ricardo Zamora, Paulino Alcántara, and Josep Samitier.
It was the chronicle of a death long foretold. Since 24 September 1957, the day the Camp Nou was inaugurated, Les Corts had become Barça’s second stadium, used by the club as the venue for various international friendly matches involving the first team, as well as for matches played by reserve teams and certain activities of the club’s sporting sections. On occasion, Les Corts was also used as a training ground. So, for eight years, from 1957 to 1965, Barça had two stadiums, with Les Corts remaining an ever-available but underused resource, despite its symbolic importance and, above all, its large capacity of 48,000 spectators. The figures show that between 4 June 1958 and 8 November 1961, Barça’s first team played 21 friendly matches at the old Les Corts stadium, most of them against foreign teams and played at night.
For their part, FC Barcelona’s youth teams continued to play matches at Les Corts until just a few months before its demolition. The last match was played as late as 10 July 1965. It was the final of the O.A.R. U14 Youth Football Championship, contested between Barça and UB Catalonia. The almost empty stands of Les Corts (once glorious and packed to the rafters) witnessed a 3–1 victory for Barça’s youngsters. When the match ended and the champions had celebrated, Les Corts closed its doors forever.
An inevitable fate
Once the old stadium had been definitively abandoned, there was a steady stream of complaints from local residents calling for the demolition of the ground, citing the dangerous presence of dirt and rats. The final fate of Les Corts was therefore inevitable. And so it was that, at one o’clock in the afternoon on 4 February 1966, Barça president Enric Llaudet symbolically raised the pickaxe that marked the start of its demolition, before a large gathering of around 500 members who had come to bid a final farewell to the so-called Cathedral of football. It was an austere and simple ceremony, yet profoundly moving.
After some heartfelt words from Llaudet, the blaugrana flag flying at the centre of the pitch was lowered by August Santamans, member number 4 of the club, accompanied by Salvador Martínez Surroca, a former Barça player who had featured in the inaugural match Les Corts on that distant 20 May 1922. With no further room for sentimentality, Llaudet symbolically began the demolition of Les Corts, using a pneumatic drill at the exact spot where the first stone had been laid on 8 February 1922, in the third row of the Lower Goal stand.
Once the ceremony was over, the demolition company’s machinery moved in, ready to carry out its relentless work, beginning with the aforementioned Lower Goal stands and breaking the first seats. Then an unusual scene unfolded: instead of leaving the stadium, many attendees went up to the first piles of rubble to take away some relic as a keepsake. Some took a handful of earth, others a stone, and one member even managed to collect a huge piece of a seat.
“It’s where I always used to sit, and I’m taking it home to put in my garden as a souvenir,” he said, visibly moved.
Second part
This story had a second chapter. Once the ground had been reduced to an empty plot and a memory, a transitional period began under the Barça board, while they waited to finally sell the site, an objective that Llaudet had pursued relentlessly since becoming FC Barcelona president in June 1961.
At last, on 18 May 1966, the long-awaited news arrived: the club had reached an agreement with the real estate company Habitat to sell the site for 226 million pesetas. It was a godsend for Barça’s finances after the enormous debt generated by the construction of the Camp Nou between 1954 and 1957. The stadium’s cost had risen from the initially budgeted 66,620,000 pesetas to the staggering final figure of 288 million, bringing the club to the brink of financial ruin. The entire proceeds from the sale of Les Cortes were used to amortise the the debt: bank loans, mortgage obligations, and bonds. As Revista Barça explained on 25 May 1966: “Those plots of land rendered their final and great service to the club, freeing it from the financial burdens it had suffered since the construction of the new stadium.”
The epilogue to the story of the sale of Les Corts land was not particularly pleasant for local residents. The Habitat group took four years to build on the site, turning it into a rubbish dump that caught the attention of La Vanguardia, which asked bitterly in its editorial of 21 August 1969: “Is it that the municipal ordinance requiring undeveloped plots to be fenced off cannot be applied to this particular site in Les Corts?”
The inconveniences of living under a dictatorship that applied the law at its own whim…
Llaudet’s emotional speech
The speech delivered by FC Barcelona president Enric Llaudet to open the demolition ceremony of Les Corts Stadium (exceptionally in Catalan at a time of dictatorship) was imbued with the emotion of the moment:
“Dear fellow members. This Les Corts ground was inaugurated on 20 May 1922 and is being demolished on 4 February 1966."
"Forty-four years of our club’s history, forty-four years of our city’s history. How many joys, how many victories, but also how many sorrows, how many struggles and how many defeats."
"Today I look into the faces of the older generation and read longing and memories in their eyes. Through their tear-filled gaze I see Gamper, Jover, my father, and all those who fought to create what they so aptly called the ‘Cathedral of Football’. For all these memories and these people, in their honour and to their greater glory, I ask you for a minute’s silence."
"I now look at the faces of the young, and in their eyes I read hope, the will to fight, and faith in tomorrow. Futbol Club Barcelona continues to live, with greater strength and vitality, following the example set by its pioneers. We are proud to bear the name of our city, convinced of our faith and our obligations, and more eager than ever to spread that name throughout the world, so that it may be known, admired, and respected, together with our blaugrana flag."
"Everything in this world comes to an end, except continuity. Yesterday at the old Les Corts, today at the new stadium, our club will move forward. Here, gathered today, we bid a final farewell to this ground and sacrifice it so that it may render its last service to our institution. If yesterday this land was the Cathedral of Catalan Football, tomorrow it may be the salvation and flourishing continuity of our club. And our stadium will continue to be our cathedral and, at the same time, the pride of our city. Visca el Barça!"