When Barça joined the oil fever
In the spring of 2001, Barça became the first football team with gas stations
Torroella de MontgríIn the spring of 2001, exactly a quarter of a century ago, Barça became the first football team with gas stations. "As this will be a success, I am sure we will end up setting up gas stations even in Madrid," said Ángel Fernández, vice-president of Joan Gaspart, at the inauguration of the first Barça gas station. It was inaugurated in the municipality of Torroella de Montgrí, in Baix Empordà, in mid-April, just after two 4-4 draws against Villarreal and Zaragoza and just before the elimination in the UEFA Cup semi-finals against Liverpool. The coach was Llorenç Serra Ferrer. It was another Barça, another football, and another world.
The club had reached an agreement with the Bon Preu group to open a chain of service areas under the Barça brand, with the name, crest, and colors of Barça and a store with products. In return, it would receive an annual amount and a percentage of the revenue from gasoline sales.
Anton Parera, a trusted figure of Josep Lluís Núñez first and Gaspart later, admits with a smile that it was "a very new and totally unusual thing for a football club to ally with a company to sell gasoline." "President Núñez always talked about atypical revenue, and we opened many doors and invented many things to find money. These are things that almost everyone does today and that no one thought of back then," he explains. The idea was to make everyone pay, from television stations to all the companies that approached Camp Nou. "When Chupa Chups wanted to do the Cruyff campaign, we told them: 'Cruyff can eat Chupa Chups, but you have to pay for it.'" The mastermind behind the gas station project was Robert Tendero, Barça's licensing manager.
"It was like a theme park, very American"
The mayor of Torroella at the time, Josep Ferrer, acknowledges that the opening of the gas station was "like a historic event" because at that time the municipality only had one gas station and, of course, due to the presence of Barça. He recalls the surprise they felt when the proposal arrived. "All the stars aligned. We couldn't let it go to waste and without doing anything strange, we provided the maximum possible facilities – he admits –. At that time, gas stations were a symptom of total progress. Furthermore, it was a new gas station with a very modern concept for the time because it already had a store, and the fact that it was Barça's just rounded off the job," he states. The town experienced it with great enthusiasm because it was also the first of the Barça gas stations and the inauguration was "a big party", a very crowded one.
Joan Delgado, drummer of the group Cala Vento, was eight years old: "We found it very funny because it was also all Barça. It was brutal. It was incredible. On the outside it was all painted Barça and there were Barça flags and crests everywhere. It was like a theme park, something very American". He talks about the "mythical" Barça gas station. Now it has become "a meme", a shared memory and a table conversation. He remembers going there with his father. "I used to say I was going to the Barça gas station. To make club and to make country. The gasoline was the same as everywhere else, but we felt it that way. It was Barça gasoline", says Genís Casamort, member of the Barça supporters' club.
The membership card, a relic
Bon Preu created a card for all members of the Penya Montgrí i Comarques to access a discount: four pesetas for diesel and six or seven for unleaded gasoline. Some still keep that card, half blue, half garnet, as a "relic" and still use it in supermarkets or at gas stations. "Every time I pay, they ask me where I got it from because they've never seen it before," explains Moisés Huertas. He is a Real Madrid fan, but he was and is a member of the club because in small towns, clubs are a cohesive and structuring element of social life. His Ford Escort ran on Barça gasoline. Xavier Martí, president of the Penya Sempre Pericos, had accompanied his father, a Barça fan, some days, "but I had never spent money out of my own pocket." "Later I did go, but while it was Barça's, never," he smiles.
The Barça gas station didn't last long, perhaps two or three years, and soon adopted the Bon Preu brand name, but the card remains valid. The initiative didn't have much relevance or continuity. To the point that the president of Barça admits he remembers nothing about that project. "I could say that at the time it was a very good idea because it was for the benefit of the member and to tell a bedtime story, but the truth is I have no idea," admits Gaspart with a smile. Javier Pérez-Farguell, CEO of Gaspart, certifies that the project "was not successful." "We thought we would be the first of many, many Barça gas stations, but it lasted very little," says Jordi Colomí, current mayor of Torroella and then councilor for Urban Planning.
They explain that perhaps two, three, four more were opened, but no one knows for sure where they were located or if any more were actually inaugurated or not. What remains and will always remain is that Torroella had the first Barça gas station. Ferrer, the mayor at the time, goes there once in a while: now only to inflate the tires because he has switched to an electric car: "Whenever you go or pass by, your subconscious makes you think of Barça. That was, is, and will be the Barça gas station." In 2001, the residents of Torroella helped pay for the signings of Patrick Andersson, Bonano, Christanval, Rochemback, and company with gasoline.
