Over 88,000 fans were on hand Saturday at the Camp Nou, to say goodbye to a home that has stood tall and proud since its opening in 1957.
It was the middle of the Franco era, and Alfredo di Stefano was reigning supreme for Real Madrid, turning them into a force to be reckoned with across Spain.
Barcelona needed to make a statement to signal it intended to keep pace with the ambitions of Santiago Bernabeu, who built his own stadium 10 years earlier in 1947, and was in the process of turning Real Madrid into the global power, and surpassing the likes of Barcelona and Atletico Madrid along the way.