© EuroFootball.com
"Barcelona" fans at the referendum overwhelmingly supported the club's management proposal to renovate the Camp Nou stadium and build a new sports complex next to it.
This was revealed on Saturday after counting the ballots of the Catalonia team's socios, the club's voting members.
27,161 socios voted, or 72.36% of all fans who participated in the elections, in favor of the decision by the Barcelona Board of Directors to revamp the current football arena, while 25.55% (9,589 votes) of fans found this proposal unacceptable.
An additional 751 socios abstained from voting, and 34 ballots were deemed invalid.
"Today is the day when the future of the club is decided for the next fifty years," Catalonia club president Josep Maria Bartomeu told journalists at the voting urn.
Earlier this year, the Barcelona Board of Directors discussed and publicly presented further perspectives on the club's infrastructure renovation at a special meeting.
The current Spanish champions had to choose between renovating the Camp Nou stadium or building a completely new arena in the Avenida Diagonal area, considered one of the most important financial and commercial centers in the Catalan capital. However, it was decided not to proceed with the construction of a new arena due to extremely high costs. The proposed project cost was as high as 1.2 billion euros.
The Barcelona leaders decided to allocate half of this amount, around 600 million euros, for the renovation of Camp Nou. However, as required by the club's statute, a fan vote was mandatory to approve such a decision.
The largest football stadium in Europe, Camp Nou, was officially opened in 1957, and since then it has been the home of the Barcelona club. Renovation works are scheduled to begin in May 2017 and finish in the summer of 2021.
The plan is to increase the capacity of the current stadium to 105,000 seats, all of which will be covered.
Instead of the current reserve team stadium Mini Estadi, a new Palau Blaugrana arena should be built, with seating for 10,000 people. In some cases, the space could be expanded to accommodate about 12,000 people, allowing not only basketball games but also concerts or other public events.
Close to the new Palau Blaugrana arena, a pavilion with a capacity of 2,000 seats should be built, where Barcelona sports section teams could hold training sessions or minor matches.
The Mini Estadi stadium for the youth academy teams of Barcelona will be relocated to the Ciutat Esportiva training complex, with seating for 6 to 7,000 spectators in the stands.
The leaders of the Catalonia club also noted that during the renovation works, the Camp Nou stadium will not be closed, and the Barcelona football team will continue to play their matches there.
