
We have become banks. The stages of so many lives are increasingly anecdotal in the big city, ignored in front of the terraces of the bars. But there are places where they are still important and where, by chance, the benches draw a fine line that connects the slow life of a village in Soria with the rhythm and the deafening noise of the soccer field of one of the most important soccer stadiums in the world.
Right now, the Camp Nou is in the midst of a renovation and monetizes nostalgia by selling everything from pieces of turf to diamonds made from the stadium’s remains. But long before that, in 1994, the stadium underwent a major renovation in which the seats had to be replaced. Many ended up in the garbage but many others ended up, because of these things, in Langa de Duero, a village in Soria that now has benches where you can watch life go by in the seats of a stadium where the entire population could fit more than 100 times. This is the story.
The benches that went from the north goal to a village of Soria
During the 1994 works, many of the old seats were removed from the Camp Nou and, instead of being sold or reused in other sports venues, they were donated. This is explained in an article in Relevo, which in turn quotes DesdeSoria: today, in the corners and streets of a town of less than a thousand inhabitants in the province of Soria, you can see these seats as street benches. How did they get there?
Apparently, some neighbors of Langa who had a restaurant near the stadium found out about these donations. At that time the market was somewhat different, not everything was monetized and the only condition that FC Barcelona set for donating those seats was that you had to come and get them.
Thus, in 1994 a large truck left Barcelona and traveled more than 600 kilometers to this corner of Castilla y León loaded with the iconic blue and white seats, which are now distributed throughout the town.
From the streets to the surrounding roads, passing, obviously, through the Langa soccer field, where fans can sit and watch their stars in exactly the same place where a Culé watched the 1993 season, when Cruyff was the coach, Koeman led the defense and a mythical Romario scored the goals that made the fans get up from these traveling seats.