The incredible journey of the old Camp Nou seats to a lost village in Soria

TorellóFrom being prime witnesses to the Dream Team's successes, to Romário de Souza's cow tail on Rafa Alkorta's in that unforgettable 5-0 win in Madrid, and so many other great days and so many other great names in Barça's history, to hosting heated gatherings of retirees, converted into benches. This is the story of the 1,700 former Camp Nou seats that almost three decades ago arrived in Langa de Duero, a small town in Soria that, like so many other municipalities in rural Spain, continues to bleed due to depopulation.

"I couldn't imagine that 27 years later there would be all this boom," admits Aurelio Zayas (Langa de Duero, 1953), now retired and somewhat fed up with the interest the story has aroused in recent months. He is the key figure in the case.

In 1969, he moved to Aranda de Duero, half an hour away, and soon after, he emigrated to Barcelona, ​​​​like so many other children of the town, in search of a future. "A lot of us emigrated. There were already too many people in the countryside because it was becoming mechanized, and here you were left alone because everyone was leaving. It was the only option we had," says Zayas. Next to him are Constantino de Pablo, former mayor, and Iván Aparicio, current mayor. Aparicio retrieves a census from 1942: the five towns that make up Langa totaled 3,399 inhabitants. Now there are 700. De Pablo nostalgically shows the program for the 1955 festival, with advertisements for more than forty businesses: five butcher shops and six grocery stores.

They say the town's "boom" came around 1896, thanks to a large flour mill and the arrival of the train. The train hasn't run for years now because the line was rerouted. The sign indicating the road to Soria is barely legible because it's half-erased. The population of the entire province of Soria, 90,000, would fit inside Camp Nou. They lament that Langa, 175 kilometers from Madrid, is very far away. They talk about empty, abandoned, or downright ruined houses, and the pain of seeing so many for-sale signs. "There are few rentals, but there are houses for 300 euros," says De Pablo.

Zayas puts aside his nostalgia and resumes his story. He worked for three decades as a waiter at Marcelino, on Montjuïc, very close to the Miró Museum. One day in 1998, Jaume Langa, Barça's long-time physiotherapist, walked into the bar because he'd noticed a sign outside the door with a picture of the Langa stadium. "I saw his name and came in to ask where the stadium was," he continues. He then half-jokingly told another customer that it would be great to build a miniature Camp Nou in Langa, and that man told him that the old Camp Nou seats were stored right in front of the bar, in the pool that had hosted the diving events at the Olympic Games. The seats came from the 1994 renovation of the Camp Nou, the last major refurbishment before the current one.

What started as a bar conversation soon became a real, unique opportunity. The seats had been given at the Museu Miró for an exhibition that never materialized and had been left in standbyThe museum's staff and managers were "like family" because they went to Marcelino for lunch almost every day. The Fundació Miró accepted the proposal and provided the seats free of charge. They would be used on the soccer field and in the town's streets, as there were no benches in Langa. The only condition was that they had to be collected within 24 hours.

"We removed 15,400 screws between four people."

Zayas contacted De Pablo and rented a truck to transport the seats to Langa, 550 kilometers from Camp Nou. It cost about 100,000 pesetas, or about 600 euros. They also bought two electric screwdrivers to dismantle the seats.

"We removed 15,400 screws between four people," he says. They also loaded about 100 red seats from a Catalan theater. The truck arrived on May 10, 1998. The seats were installed in the plenary hall and the doctor's office. They have since disappeared, but the blue seats remain part of the town's street furniture and landscape. For a time, it was thought they came from the Sarrià stadium, the former home of Espanyol, but no. Some are half-broken, but they remain part of the town's daily life, transformed into a private open-air Barça museum. Langa de Duero is full of Camp Nou seats. They're everywhere. Even on the facades of houses. Even in the cemetery. "In case the dead come out, so they can sunbathe," Zayas says, smiling.

When he finishes telling the story, he gets up from one of his seats. Zayas smiles and confesses. He's a Real Madrid fan.