I have never shared the praise for the new look of the Bernabéu, which I find ugly as well as out of scale, with its façades at the back swollen to the point of overwhelming the neighbouring houses. But as the monumental work, still unfinished, was intended to improve the club’s income to keep open access to the best players on the market, at least it would be useful.
To this end, the work was complemented on the fly with the modern marvel of the hypogeum, which allows the grass to be folded and stored away whenever desired, like a tablecloth in a drawer. In this way, large concerts and all kinds of shows could be held without damaging the grass, which would make the site more profitable. Florentino announced at the last assembly that the cost would be amortized at a rate of 60 million a year, but that it would produce an increase in income that would be more than double that amount.
But he had not taken the neighbours into account. Neither he nor the mayor, who would have had more of an obligation to do so. After all, not disturbing the neighbours is a principle of civility and courtesy, but preventing it from happening is an obligation of the authorities.
Twenty-five games a year were already a disruption to the placid monotony, but the neighbours tolerated it out of pure habit: Madrid was already there when they arrived. But the concerts are something else. I was surprised by the almost provincial pride with which they celebrated Taylor Swift’s arrival accompanied by more than a hundred trailers. I thought about what that means for traffic, from two days before until two days after. I thought that when there is football, everything consists of two buses arriving, twenty-five boys getting off each one, playing, showering and leaving. It’s something else. And the public is something else too. The majority of the football fans are regulars, they go to the field like someone who goes to a relative’s house, spend two hours there and leave. The public at concerts is not the same.
And the noise. Concerts require noise. Not the sporadic clamour of football, but the sound broadcast to the four winds by state-of-the-art amplifiers. Turning down the volume, as has been intended, takes away their essence.
The residents have had enough of Madrid and the mayor giving them the cold shoulder and have formed an association to file a complaint which the owner of 53 Madrid, Mónica Aguirre de la Cuesta, has accepted for processing. The charge is an environmental crime. The club’s sole administrator has been summoned for hearing on 24 October.
Meanwhile, Madrid will have to revise its figures. The 120 million per year is in the balloon, but the 60 million of amortization of the work is fixed. Plus the new costs of the attempt at soundproofing. On the other hand, Florentino will have to explain himself to Legends and Sixth Street, who advanced him (not only Barça has leverage) 360 million for 30% of the new exploitation of the venue, now in the balloon. Meanwhile, it will have to face the fines for non-compliance with the limits in the concerts already held.
Unless the stadium is miraculously soundproofed, there is no way out of this. And the City Council is going to have a hard time explaining why it authorised these concerts so hastily. After all, Madrid’s interest is that of its members, and only a few of them will live in the surrounding area; but it is the City Council’s duty to protect all citizens from the abuses of a powerful and annoying neighbour.
I fear that Florentino, as full of flattery as he is lacking in criticism, has pushed things to an impossible limit in an area inhabited by people of high social standing, with the means and knowledge to organise themselves. The relationship between the club and the neighbourhood was always good as long as a few days of football were largely compensated for by the prestige that Real Madrid brought to the area. But what is being proposed, which almost reduces football to a second activity after concerts, has the appearance of madness.
And, of course, Madrid has had to cancel the concerts. Now, building after building, it will try to soundproof the stadium, something that according to several experts consulted does not seem feasible. There is talk of heavy curtains in the vomitories, of closing off open sections of the façade… More work, more trucks, more inconvenience and perhaps no results.
