'Diego Lives': Immersive Maradona exhibit hits Barcelona

Argentina football legend Diego Maradona comes to life in an immersive exhibit underway in Barcelona, featuring a hologram of the late player and a reconstruction of his childhood home.

After runs in Naples and Tel Aviv, the Diego Vive ("Diego Lives" in English) exhibition will run for the next two months in the Spanish city where Maradona spent two unhappy, injury-marred, seasons in the early 1980s at FC Barcelona.

Visitors are greeted to the exhibition, spread over 2,000 square metres (21,5000 square feet) in central Barcelona, by a hologram of a young Maradona decked out in a Boca Juniors jersey, the club with which he won his only Argentine league title.

They can also take a penalty kick in the style of the player or have their photo taken recreating his notorious goal during Argentina's 2-1 win over England in the quarter finals of the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.

Maradona thumped in the goal with a raised fist, which he latter dubbed as being scored by the "Hand of God."

"When you are here you feel again that Diego is next to you, and that is the idea, to feel him," said Avelino Tamargo, one of the creators of this travelling exhibition.

It is backed by relatives of the player who died in 2020 aged 60 while recovering from brain surgery for a blood clot after decades of battling addictions to drugs and alcohol.

The exhibition also features a selection of photos, an immersive video show that tells his life story and a reconstruction of his childhood home in the Villa Fiorito shanty town on the outskirts of Buenos Aires where he grew up, the fifth of eight children.

"For me Maradona was the hero of my childhood, the hero of my whole generation," said Tamargo.

A court in Argentina last week authorised the transfer of Maradona's remains, at his daughter's request, from a cemetery to a mausoleum to be built for him in central Buenos Aires.

In his homeland he is widely considered the world's greatest footballer and has gained the iconic status of fellow Argentines Che Guevara and Eva Perón.

– TIMES/AFP