One of these days I am going to devote more time to write about this long, fateful and tragic story. For the time being, let me give you a short snapshot of what has happened to the old San Lorenzo stadium during the dictatorship period.
On May 17th, 1916, San Lorenzo inaugurated his mythic stadium "El Gasometro", located in the neighbourhood of Boedo, with a maximum capacity of 75.000 people. Since then, "El Gasometro" became one of the largest and most comfortable stadiums in Argentina. The most important musical events would be held in “El Gasometro,” and the Argentine National team would play in “El Gasometro.”
One fateful day, March 7th 1980, Osvaldo Cacciatore, Councillor of the City of Buenos Aires in the Argentine Dictatorship at that time, ordered to demolish “El Gasometro” arguing that he wanted to open a new street that would cross the area where the stadium was placed, plus they wanted to build a school also around the same area. Believe it or not, that was a dictatorship and, by definition, they ended up doing what they wanted: “El Gasometro” was demolished.
The story does not finish here though. Would you believe me if I told you that instead of building the school and the street, those lands were sold to Carrefour? It would sound crazy, wouldn’t it? Well, that is what it happened. Carrefour bought the lands in 1985 and they built a cold supermarket in the same place where “El Gasometro” would host emotions and passions of millions of people.
Ten years after the demolition and with a big effort of all San Lorenzo supporters, we all built our new stadium “El Nuevo Gasometro” in the neighbourhood of Villa Soldati. Nevertheless, most of San Lorenzo history and identity still remains in Boedo and it’s our right to get what it has been snatched by the dictatorship back. A group of San Lorenzo supporters (see for example: http://www.volveavenidalaplata.com.ar, http://www.schcasla.com.ar or http://www.deboedovengo.com) are working hard in order to achieve this aim. The first step is to get the portion of land (4500 mts2) in which the school was going to be built but it was never built.
Last Tuesday August 7th, San Lorenzo gave a very important step towards this objective. A Public Audience was held in the San Martín Hall of the City of Buenos Aires Parliament. More than 150 San Lorenzo supporters were present and more than 20 people acted as speakers. Now we need to wait for the final approval. We will keep you updated.
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