A few weeks ago, the virtual experience of the Barça Museum reopened, after long months of readjustments and updates. It is the last of the touch-ups before its entire transfer to the old Palau de Gel, that mythical rink from 1971 where we compulsively fell on our butts while trying to reach the central island of the crest, under the magnificent stained-glass windows by Fornells Pla. Now the rink is closed. It is impressive to enter that bar and see a wall where before one could see through the glass all the swirl of children sliding counter-clockwise, soaking their blue and crimson wool gloves on the ice or holding hands with their first crush. A wall, ladies and gentlemen. And, behind that blind and mute wall, the future museum.
Its inauguration is scheduled for June 7. What we are allowed to say for now is that it will not be a museum as full of objects and fetishes as the current one (which, for example, already got rid of its somewhat disorganized art collection), and that the multimedia, tactile, and immersive factor will be the general trend. An area called the time machine, another with a strong prominence of the women's sections, a recognition in the Masia, and above all a spectacular tubular space of which we can only know (or explain) that nothing like it will have ever been seen in Barcelona or in the world. Immense. King size. Without glasses. This would be the main difference with the current Virtual Dream, which, having already been advanced compared to the rest of football club museums, will give way in June to a new, even more realistic and direct experience.
The museum we already know (and it has a name that everyone knows), it is the very first in cultural visits in Barcelona and only because the Sagrada Família has not wanted to classify its museum as a museum: Kubala's boots (which he himself painted gold, the first tacky person long before Nike), the multiplicity of trophies exhibited, the first (and tiny) golden balls, the mythical shirts with the four bars, the large video wall with the most emotional of productions, its own space for Messi… It is truly true, as they tell me, that with a few exceptions, the explanation of the club's history must learn to go back from the year 2000, if it does not want to be too boring for young audiences. That is, to skip much of the previous years, unless it is to refer to the origins, to the ancestral prohibitions and, of course, to the omnipresent soul of Johan Cruyff. A soul that hovers over the entire atmosphere, infinitely more than that name that everyone knows and that many would not want to know, and that still intends to preside over the box of our memories.
The visit, as is known, can include access to the changing rooms or end with the tour along the corridor that leads to the pitch (only the side), and everything else is virtual photographs with virtual players or from various supposed places on the field. What is most surprising is to see how foreign visitors stop to read each and every one of the explanations, unlike what they do in the country's art museums, whose eagerness seems to be directed at passing an exam. And one looks at that space, condemned to disappear in little more than a month, and cannot help but remember that the Camp Nou itself will close around the same dates and that we are facing the last days of being able to walk among that reinforced concrete that, being so old, seems totally disarmed and senile concrete. Walls impregnated with cigar smoke and beer (despite everything), personal and untransferable sacred corners, lifelong seats, third regional toilets and fan club plaques like tattoos on the skin that will resist leaving very much.
It seems that that crust, that skin, will also have a memory in the new stadium when it opens. Supposedly it will be in 2024 (we'll see if the Sagrada Família catches up with them), but for now this 1950s Coliseum will remain abandoned for many months while it takes on the silhouette of a worm-eaten molar and finally ends up on the ground. Meanwhile, its museum is packing its bags for the opposite sidewalk and will occupy an enchanted air with howls on ice. This will be the beginning of June, the works are advanced and it will be the only place in Camp Vell where we can still carry out some activity until the Nou is erected. I don't know how long it takes for an atmosphere, or a wall, to take on the endearing tone of memory. To become part of the family. I do know that the future bets that the museum has in mind cannot and should not pretend to comfort our pathetic nostalgia. Now it's time to create the memories of the coming decades. To gild our own boots. The future has never ceased to be, in fact and throughout history, a virtual reality.