One of the great icons of the Camp Nou was its protective tribune visor, which protected the spectators in that area of the stands from the sun and rain. The Spotify Camp Nou, which is scheduled to open at full capacity in August 2026, will end that characteristic figure of the stadium, which will have all its seats covered for the first time.
“The roof is the most complex part of the project,” acknowledges Haldun Firat Köktürk, general director of Limak Construction, a visible face since the beginning of the Turkish company's project in Barcelona. However, it is no coincidence that last week he was joined in the Catalan capital by Resit Yildiz, Limak's project director. Yildiz, who has just rented an apartment in the Barcelona neighborhood of Sarrià, was one of the main people responsible for the construction of the Çanakkale suspension bridge, the longest in the world, with 2,023 meters between the two towers.
That bridge, inaugurated in March 2022, links the land of the Dardanelles Strait above the Sea of Marmara. Yildiz moved there and lived for three years supervising the project, even coinciding with the coronavirus pandemic. “We gained a lot of experience in the bridge project that will benefit us now at the Spotify Camp Nou,” highlights the engineer.
In Barcelona's new home they will apply all their knowledge acquired in steel and wire cabling. You will need it to lift the Big Lift tensioned deck.
There will be 48,000 square meters of roof space at the Spotify Camp Nou. Embedded there, clearly visible, will be the screens, which will function as video markers.
The Çanakkale Bridge is a pharaonic work, on which 17,000 workers worked. To stabilize and hang the road that crosses it, a beehive-shaped braided wiring system with 18,000 wires, some very long, was used. They will be inspired by this wiring to lift the roof structure with hydraulic jacks. “They are both complicated structures and have many different strings with different functions,” explains Resit Yildiz.
“Although in reality the stadium is not as big a challenge as the other one,” they admit from Limak. Especially because of the dimensions. Two indicators speak of the extreme difficulty. One is the number of wires. The other is the weight they must support.
The total length of the bridge's steel ropes is 1,300 km, while the wires on the roof of the Spotify Camp Nou add up to only 23 kilometers.
On the other hand, the total weight of the structural steel that will be used on the Spotify Camp Nou roof is 6,000 tons, while the cables will be approximately 1,500 tons. In total, 7,500 tons, which is very, very far from the 125,000 tons that the overall weight of the bridge reached.
These figures increase Limak's confidence, which also works well in advance in the acquisition of materials. “We have had the wires and steel reserved for a long time,” Köktürk discovers about his good planning. The cables come from Italy, Germany and France.
The intention is that when Barcelona leaves Montjuïc to return to Les Corts in November next year, the cable structure will already be raised, although the cover will be completed, especially during the summer of 2025 and when there are national team breaks.
Every day 5,000 vehicles cross the Canakkale suspension road. Thanks to the bridge, drivers have saved a hundred kilometers and more than an hour behind the wheel to get from Istanbul to Çannakale, the city closest to the ruins of the city of Troy. There, the horse once again keeps a big secret.
