The party of the verbena of San Juan that ended in police station

Within the new normality of football, the schedule of the resumption of LaLiga has provided that Barça receive Athletic Club the night of the San Juan festival at ten. A schedule that has raised protests among many fans.

Playing at the festival is not usual, but it was in the late 50s when Barcelona organized a friendly against a renowned team that was considered one more act of the celebrations of the shortest night of the year. From 1956 to 1961 Barça took advantage of the fact that in June they had already finished the league championship and the Cup to play friendly that served to enter a good money and that were very popular. Great teams, most of the time from South America, made a stopover in Barcelona and Les Corts first and then the Camp Nou filled up for the verbena game.

Of all those parties, none as rugged as the one that was played at 22:15 on the night of San Juan in 1956 in which Barça faced Botafogo de Garrincha that had to be suspended in the 63rd minute of the game due to a monumental tangana between the players that forced the police to intervene on the same lawn and detain several players who spent the night in the barracks.

The case was that the game from the beginning was anything but friendly. Both teams were used with unusual and out of measure hardness. Midway through the second half, Andreu Bosch was stretched out on the ground unconscious, supposedly by the punch of the Brazilian goalkeeper Amauri. The spirits were boiling and just exploded when Angel Mur, a Barça masseur who had run to attend to the player, was also knocked out with a punch. That was the wishbone that unleashed a monumental fight in which Kubala demonstrated his boxing skills, having been an outstanding boxer in his youth in Hungary. Laszci positioned himself with his back resting on the goalpost to avoid being attacked from behind and from there he was knocking out any opponent who approached him.

The Kubala legend grew even larger and all those who attended the field that same night explained the feat of the Hungarian exaggerating it to unsuspected limits: that if he had knocked down six, eight. The truth, as explained once to La Vanguardia Justo Tejada, who played that game, is that “He knocked down two or three, while I, who was a pipiolo, moved away from there.” Among the crowd that filled the stands, a 12-year-old boy who was attending a soccer game for the first time did not believe what he saw and made Kubala his idol for life. The boy was called Joan Manuel Serrat.

The party could not be resumed and the protagonists of the brawl spent the night declaring at the police station.

The Sant Joan verbena party continued to be held with great public acceptance. The following year Vasco da Gama de Vavá played, who thrashed Barça 2-7, then it was the turn of Nacional de Montevideo (5-2 for Barça) and Corinthians, in the first of those matches. at the Camp Nou.

In 1960 the guest was Monaco and On the night of San Juan in 1961, the last of these verbena matches was played against Atletic Clube de Portugal, which also served as a tribute match to Kubala, the great protagonist of those parties of verbena since the one of 1956 ended up in police station.