Barça presidential hopeful Vilajoana calls out 'lies' over Camp Nou roof timeline
Presidential candidate Xavier Vilajoana claims the Spotify Camp Nou roof will take 8-10 months to complete — not three — and wants members to have the final say.
Xavier Vilajoana has come out swinging ahead of the FC Barcelona presidential election, dropping a pretty significant claim about the Spotify Camp Nou renovation that’ll raise a few eyebrows among the club’s long-suffering socios.
The roof timeline row
Vilajoana, who is standing as a pre-candidate for the Barça presidency, presented his patrimonial project on Wednesday — and the centrepiece was a blunt challenge to the current narrative around the stadium works.
His big claim? That anyone saying the roof will be finished in three months is, in his words, telling porkies.
And his reasoning is actually pretty hard to argue with:
- The Camp Nou roof covers 40,000 square metres of tensioned canvas with a steel substructure
- That kind of construction simply cannot be completed in a three-month window, he argues
- His estimate? Eight to ten months — a very different picture to what’s been put out there
It’s the sort of thing that makes you wonder what exactly has been communicated to the fanbase up to now, and whether the club’s been managing expectations or just, well, not managing them at all.
Back to Montjuïc?
So if the roof is going to take the best part of a year, where does Barça play in the meantime? Vilajoana’s answer is a return to the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys on Montjuïc — the temporary home the club used while the Camp Nou works began.
He’s been clear that under his watch, it wouldn’t just be a decision handed down from on high. The socios would vote on the available options, with the Montjuïc return being his preferred proposal — at affordable prices and exclusively for members.
The transparency angle
What Vilajoana seems to be going for here is a contrast with the current leadership — positioning himself as the straight-talking candidate who’ll put the hard truths on the table rather than spin a rosier story.
It’s a savvy bit of political messaging, to be fair. Barça’s members have had a rough few years of financial chaos, austerity levers, and endless construction drama. Promising transparency and member-led decisions is exactly the kind of thing that plays well with a fanbase that’s felt a bit mugged off lately.
What this means for the election
Vilajoana is still at the pre-candidate stage, so there’s a long road ahead before any of this becomes policy. But throwing down the gauntlet on the Camp Nou timeline is a bold opener — it forces the current board and rival candidates to either defend the three-month claim or quietly walk it back.
Either way, the debate around the stadium rebuild just got a bit more lively. And for Barça’s long-suffering members, probably a bit more stressful too.