This was confirmed by the vice president and head of the social area, Jordi Cardoner, at a press conference which took place on Friday and which was used to assess this area in particular and, at the same time, to explain certain other developments. The “Grada de Animación”, which will be located on the first tier of the North Goal stand, and will consist of 1,400 seats, has the objective of achieving an even fuller stadium with greater potential for cheering on the players.

All efforts are focused on members

In this way, and confirmed by Jordi Cardoner, " members will be the only fans entitled to participate in it.....we want to focus all our efforts on our members, and we believe it is a way to help secure and guarantee the success of project," he said, just before making it clear that this measure is most appropriate "to penalise them as little as possible, and to stop them thinking that non-members have more rights than they have".

Compensation for relocation of seating

Before launching the “Grada de Animación” project it’ll be imperative that members who currently occupy these 1,400 seats have the possibility to be relocated in another area of the Camp Nou. In this vein, the head of the Social Area made it clear that "if the relocation happens to be to a better area, then the member will have to pay the difference, although the club is planning to make an effort in the form of compensation with regard to this".

"We want to move forward based on a solid foundation"

Jordi Cardoner has insisted that at the moment there is no fixed date for the implementation of the project: "We hope it can be this year, but it’s of relatively small concern, because we want to move forward on a solid foundation. This project will be implemented when we can absolutely guarantee that it will be a success". In any case, he ruled out that its introduction might coincide with the start of the season.

"It will be a safe and model area"

He is also fully convinced that it will be "a safe and model area." As explained at the time, the list of fans forming part of this area will be controlled in part by the Catalan police, in order to maintain unchanged the club’s commitment in terms of zero tolerance towards violence. "Everyone will be filtered, via a register, and it’ll be the Police who’ll give the go-ahead. There will be mechanisms and technologies in place to identify fans who participate in this area" he concluded.