Estadio Mestalla 5.38

Mestalla Stadium is a football stadium in Valencia, Spain. The stadium is the home ground of Valencia Club de Fútbol and has a capacity of 49,500 seats.HistoryThe Estadio Mestalla was inaugurated with a friendly match on 20 May 1923 between Valencia CF and Levante UD. The new stadium had a capacity of 17,000 spectators, which was increased to 25,000 four years later. During the Civil War, the Mestalla was used as a concentration camp and storage warehouse. It would only keep its structure, since the rest was an empty plot of land with no terraces and a grandstand damaged during the war.During the 1950s, the Mestalla was renovated, resulting in a stadium with a seating capacity of 45,500 spectators. It was severely damaged by the flood of October 1957 when the Turia River broke its banks. The stadium soon returned to operational use with some more improvements, such as the addition of artificial lighting, and was inaugurated during the 1959 Fallas festivities.In 1969, the stadium's name was changed to Estadio Luis Casanova, to honour club president Luis Casanova Giner. The change lasted for a quarter of a century, when Casanova admitted that he was completely overwhelmed by such an honour and requested in 1994 that the stadium's name be returned to Mestalla.