Carlos Rosique |València (EFE) In 1982 or 1998, these stadium renovations have triggered economic and social problems for the Che entity.
Reaching its centenary, this field that is part of the silhouette and the urban structure of Valencia no longer awaits a new makeover, but rather to be replaced by a new stadium, the New Mestalla, which has not arrived and was going to be ready in 2009, but whose construction has been stopped for more than a decade and has left a massive debt to the club.
However, the reality a century ago was very different. The Avenida de Suecia stadium, which in 1923 had nothing but crop fields around it and was totally isolated from a city that had not expanded to the north, opened as a dirt field for some 17,000 fans.
However, the premature successes of Valencia, which had already forced it to move from Algirós -his first home- to Mestalla after just four years of history, led to a first reform in 1927, barely fifty months after its inauguration.
The partner and architect Francisco Almenar, who was also in charge of its construction in 1923 and who would become president in the 1930s, took care of its reform.
Almenar included grass on the field of play and an exterior facing brick façade topped with the shields of the Valencian Football Federation and the Royal Spanish Federation, in addition to creating a covered grandstand with which the stadium’s capacity became around 25,000. viewers.
Reconstruction of the Mestalla stadium after the Civil War
During the Civil War, Mestalla became a garage for all types of vehicles, its lawn became an orchard where potatoes and other types of vegetables were planted, and it was even a junkyard.
Thus, before the end of the contest and under the direction of Commander Giménez Buesa, who was ultimately the club’s president, a first very basic emergency repair was begun in April 1939 with which it was intended to clean up the Mestalla, absolutely destroyed by the war. and that it was completed a year later with a second, much larger remodeling.
The great extension of the 50 and Santiago Bernabéu
In the fifties and after a golden age for Valencia, which between 1941 and 1949 won five titles, the club’s president at the time, Luis Casanova, embarked on one of the biggest reforms in Spanish football.
Casanova intended to double the stadium’s capacity, taking inspiration from the new Chamartín and going from a capacity of around 25,000 people to 70,000 spectators.
But the high cost of this reform weighed down the sporting performance of Valencia at that time, which had to divert a large part of the investment in the squad to the stadium, which broke with the path of titles that it had chained in the forties and forced to delay the reform and redefine it: the complete project contemplated an obelisk and capacity for up to 70,000 fans, but it ended up being 55,000.
Thus, this unfinished plan due to lack of cash and in which Valencia found more and more problems forced the club to carry out two measures: take out 15-year installments that would provide liquidity to the club and borrow money from banks.
However, this second measure also went wrong, since the banks of the time did not want to risk leaving money to the club, so it was the president of Real Madrid, Santiago Bernabéu, who mediated, even threatening to take out the accounts of the Madrid from its own bank if the credit was not granted to the Valencian club.
The reform of the Mestalla of 82, which led the club to ruin
Two decades later, and with its sights set on hosting the 82 World Cup, Mestalla undertook a series of changes that began in 1978 and with which the club intended to host the matches of the Spanish team in the best possible way. World Cup event, as Spain would play the first phase of the competition there.
In addition, the president of the club at that time, Ramos Costa, had launched an offensive to have the great players of European and South American football: the Dutch Johnny Rep, the Paraguayan ‘Lobo’ Diarte, Rainer Bonhoff or the Argentine Mario Alberto Kempes They were some of the great figures who passed through a stadium that was being prepared for the World Cup.
Scoreboards were installed, the lower part of the stadium collapsed to differentiate the lower ring from the upper one, and the cattail chairs that had populated the stadium were replaced by plastic seats that still wear Mestalla today.
However, the high cost of the reform and also of the players meant that the team, which had won three titles between 1978 and 1980, fell financially, especially as a result of an injury to Kempes after which he did not return to play. be the same, and chained a debt for the amount of the reform and the depreciation of players, which even led him to go down to Second.
The latest reform, prosecuted and sentenced against
In 1998, Valencia began with the last reform of Mestalla, which would build a third ring -made up of the stands of La Mar, Gol Xicotet and Gol Gran- and which the residents of the Mestalla neighborhood denounced. In fact, the sentence, which has not yet been executed by the Supreme Court, requires the demolition of these three stands.
The 2006 ruling annuls the modification of the general plan of the Valencia City Council by which this reform was approved and which increased the capacity of the stadium by almost 15,000 seats.
After seeing five renovations during the 20th century, the stadium has only undergone a facelift in 2014, in which the seats were painted orange and black, and the exterior façade.
Since the construction of the New Mestalla was halted on February 25, 2009, the now-centenary stadium has been in a state of waiting in which the sentence to demolish the third ring has not yet been carried out and no horizon is clearly visible. positive in the short term to finish the New Mestalla.
Meanwhile, fans enjoy what has been their home for a century, the oldest stadium in the First Division.