Barcelona moves to restore Can Dragó as full athletics venue

Barcelona took a fresh step toward turning Can Dragó back into a true athletics venue, not just a shared sports site. On May 19, the city council said it was working intensively to improve the facility after a 10-point proposal passed the ordinary commission for Social Rights, Culture and Sports with support from all groups and an abstention from the PSC.

The proposal goes well beyond routine upkeep. It calls for the full recovery of Can Dragó for athletics, with space that can safely handle training, school sport and official competition, and it sets an urgent deadline around the Catalan under-20 championship on June 28, 2026. It also demands a technical rethink of the throwing cage, jumps equipment and the overall layout of the track, plus a specific maintenance plan for the natural grass, tartan, throwing areas and jumping areas that keep a public track usable over time.

For Club d’Atletisme Nou Barris, the debate is about capacity as much as symbolism. The club said sharing Can Dragó with CE Europa had been very difficult and warned that about 300 children train there every afternoon, many of them depending on the throwing areas. It has also argued that it is the Catalan club with the most school-age licenses, a claim that gives the site a reach far beyond Nou Barris.

The club’s pressure campaign sharpened in the spring. On April 29, it welcomed the end of football use at Can Dragó but said the problem was not solved and pointed to constant leaks in the changing rooms. On May 7, it described its situation as “insostenible” and repeated the same demands now folded into the council motion: full athletics use, better grass maintenance, moving the throwing cage to the center, relocating jump areas, upgrading the gym and changing rooms, and studying permanent stands outside the track.

The city has already framed the renovation as a major shift. In November 2025, sports councillor David Escudé called it a “before and after” project and put the works at €1.5 million. But the temporary football plan also exposed how fragile that transition was: in January 2026, CE Europa and the city said the club would not debut at Can Dragó on January 17 because the natural grass had not rooted properly after cold weather, even as the venue was being fitted with stands for 3,000 spectators, the minimum required for Primera RFEF matches.

Can Dragó has held serious athletics before, including the Catalan adapted athletics championship in 2023. The question now is whether Barcelona will turn that history into a lasting public-fitness asset, or leave the city’s runners and clubs to keep competing for scraps of usable track time.