Less than three weeks working for The Athletic have been enough for me to raise an existential doubt that has nagged me since the day I set foot on English soil.
‘Why is Barcelona’s stadium widely regarded as the ‘Nou Camp’ in England?’
It sounded really wrong in my head. The Athletic editors listened to my enquiry and actually gave some thought to that.
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Barcelona’s home has been popularly referred to as Camp Nou since it opened on September 24, 1957.
However, there was a long path to that becoming its official name.
The Catalan club’s first thought in those days was to name their new stadium after Joan Gamper, their founder in 1899. This wish was never approved by the Spanish authorities, though — back then under the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.
So while the fans were waiting for an actual title to be chosen they just started referring to the venue as Camp Nou, which simply translates to “new field (pitch)” in English, in informal conversations.
Read more: Inside the chaos and controversy of Barcelona’s Camp Nou rebuild
“The name was born after a comparison with the former stadium, Camp de Les Corts, which was then regarded as ‘the old one’, while this was ‘the new pitch’ – the Camp Nou,” explains Josep Bobe, a member of the club’s historical memory committee.
With no possibility of an agreement with the Spanish governing powers, the new stadium was baptised when first opened in 1957, on paper anyway, with a totally neutral identity: Estadio del Futbol Club Barcelona.
Popular folklore kept “Camp Nou” alive, though. Fans, the citizens of Barcelona and Catalonia, and sports media in general, preserved the informal name and it remained the most-commonly-used way to refer to Barcelona’s home ground for decades.
As time passed, Camp Nou even became accepted as the stadium’s title, but it was not its official one until as recently as 2001, when a vote among the socios — club members — was set up by then-president Joan Gaspart.
Of 29,102 valid votes, 19,861 wanted to establish Camp Nou as its identity. An arena graced by Lionel Messi, Diego Maradona and so many more of the game’s greatest players is still called that today.
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There have been several misconceptions about that name over the years. The most common one was changing the words’ order to label it as the Nou Camp.
“It is orthographically correct, in Catalan, to use the adjective before any substantive, as well as in English, but it is mainly used in a literary sense. From a colloquial point of view, the most normal use stands by placing the adjective after the actual name: Camp. Nou,” adds Bobe.
Some parts of the Spanish media have also used the term Nou Camp, but it has always been from a mockery point of view, which has been well-extended around the rest of Spain.
Probably the way of structuring sentences in English has made it easier to have the name here as Nou Camp. But the reality is, that has never been a correct form.
Now, The Athletic has decided to change its house style.
From here on, the football stadium in the heart of Barcelona will be referred to as Camp Nou in our articles — something which could very well be, after being born and raised in the heart of Catalonia, my biggest contribution to the local culture.
(Top photo: David Ramos/Getty Images)
