A day at the new Camp Nou as Barcelona beat Sevilla on election day

Barcelona – On an afternoon when ballots were cast inside the city’s civic centers, the Blaugrana delivered an emphatic verdict of their own on the pitch, dismantling Sevilla 5-2 in a half-finished yet raucous Camp Nou that welcomed more than 60,000 supporters for the first time since reconstruction began.

The victory, orchestrated by Hansi Flick’s relentless attack, doubled as a dress rehearsal for Wednesday’s high-stakes Champions League meeting with Newcastle and as a campaign rally for Joan Laporta, who cruised to re-election as club president only minutes after the final whistle.

From the outside, the stadium remains a construction site. Cranes tower over the exposed concrete, the third tier is still a lattice of steel, and the promised roof is nowhere in sight. Inside, only the lower and second bowls are open, yet the noise they generated felt complete. The familiar pre-match walk down the Rambla de Barcelona fan zone, past the museum and into lettered gates, remains unchanged, a rare constant amid the upheaval.

Concessions are rudimentary—popcorn and bocadillos served from temporary kiosks that would not look out of place at a high-school gridiron contest; hot food has yet to arrive. Locals, loyal to tradition, simply unwrapped homemade sandwiches at halftime, while tourists queued for soft drinks and photos beside the Spotify-sponsored advertising boards that now rise higher than their predecessors.

None of the scaffolding, however, could distract from the spectacle on the grass. Lamine Yamal, finally granted a breather after a bruising run of fixtures, watched the closing minutes from the bench. Pedri’s evening lasted only 45 minutes, a precautionary move ahead of the midweek European test. Raphinha, by contrast, played deep into the second half, a decision that left Marcus Rashford an unused spectator and invited quiet questions inside the press area.

The match turned early. By the time João Cancelo lashed in the fifth goal, Laporta—flanked by security but insisting on standing among supporters in section 310—was dancing arm-in-arm with strangers, smartphone lights glowing around him. He stayed for every minute, posed for selfies with children whose parents still held uncast ballots, and exited to news of a landslide win that will keep him in office for another term.

Gavi’s introduction in the 80th minute produced the day’s loudest roar short of the goals themselves, a reminder of the emotional capital vested in the academy graduate’s recovery from long-term injury.

The margin could have been greater; Sevilla twice pulled goals back but never threatened the result. More importantly for Barcelona, the rout arrived without the costly energy expenditure that has dogged a squad juggling La Liga and European commitments amid financial constraints.

Those constraints have not disappeared. Laporta’s victory speech acknowledged “fatigue” among socios wearied by years of institutional drama, yet voters ultimately rewarded tangible results: a side top of the league and alive in Europe while the balance sheet, if not fixed, no longer looks terminal.

For now, the building site that is Camp Nou will keep working through the night, its cranes illuminated against the Catalan sky. The club, too, remains a work in progress—vulnerable in the transfer market, dependent on academy gems, and chasing a return to football’s summit with a stadium that mirrors its trajectory: incomplete, ambitious, but already capable of staging the kind of football that erases every inconvenience.

Barcelona are not out of the woods, but on this electoral matchday they offered a glimpse of the clearing, and their president earned the mandate to keep guiding them toward it.