The eternal exile of the neighborhood club that does not play in its neighborhood

BarcelonaPopular football is booming in Barcelona. For some time now, young people in the capital have been flocking to their neighborhood clubs, which have become part of their social fabric on a daily basis. This is evident in Vila de Gràcia (Europa), Sant Andreu de Palomar (UE Sant Andreu), or la Verneda i la Pau (Júpiter). In Sants, where another historic team like Unió Esportiva Sants plays, this phenomenon is not reproduced. In fact, the club is becoming increasingly distant emotionally and geographically from the neighborhood and its fans, and this is explained by the fact that it has not had a home for decades, a stadium it can call its own. “We are a neighborhood club that doesn't play in its neighborhood. The team was born and grew around the historic core of Sants, but we have been competing far from there for many years,” says Artur Balaux, a lifelong Sants fan and curator of the club's historical memory. Currently, the first team plays its home games at Camp de la Bàscula, and the youth teams are spread across this same ground, l’Energia, and l’Ibèria. All of them are located in the Marina de Port neighborhood, next to the Zona Franca.“Many times people ask me: ‘Why doesn’t Sants play in Sants?’ And I answer: ‘Because we don’t have a field.’ We are exiled from our home and increasingly uprooted from the neighborhood,” comments Joan Forcadell, the club’s president. “The chain of transmission from parents to children and from grandparents to grandchildren has been broken, and of course, we have lost a lot of fans,” confirms Balaux, who is member number 18. The social decline has been accompanied by high rental costs – the lease of the three fields accounts for about 25% of the club’s annual budget – and this has been reflected on the pitch: the first team went from Tercera RFEF to Primera Catalana, two categories below, in two years, and currently occupies a relegation spot to Segunda Catalana. In 2023, Sants was a rival of Europa and Sant Andreu; as things stand, everything suggests that next season it will be five divisions lower.”

The nomadic team of Barcelona

Sants, a founding entity of the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya –the leader's jersey is white with green stripes, like the football team's shirt–, is a centenary club born in 1922 from the merger of four different sports entities and has come close to promotion to the Second Division several times. Until 1964, it played on the field in Galileu street, which it had to abandon by decree of the Barcelona City Council due to the construction of Madrid Avenue. Then, it became a nomadic club. It emigrated to Sarrià, until Kubala and Di Stéfano, from Espanyol, complained that their morning matches were ruining the pitch; it also passed through L'Hospitalet, the old Sardenya –the former Europa stadium–, and the facilities of FC Barcelona.

With the club's survival hanging by a thread and thanks to the drive of Vicenç Febrer –an illustrious neighbour from Sants who was a councillor in Barcelona City Council, a boxer, Spanish freestyle wrestling champion, and who ran a well-known car dealership with a lion in the window–, Sants moved in 1975 to the Julià de Capmany ground, which was built in the Safont quarry, on top of a former landfill in the Polvorí de Montjuïc neighbourhood. Disagreements with neighbours and Polvoritense leaders caused another exodus, and in 1984 the club inaugurated the Camp de la Magòria, where a railway station had once been.The return home

La Magòria was an ideal place to put down roots, a move to a dignified location very close to the heart of the neighborhood that seemed definitive. But, 25 years later, Sants was once again evicted from its home by the City Council, which had bought the land from the Generalitat during the crisis and had plans to redevelop the area. Since then, its diaspora continues: throughout its history it has been based in nine different grounds. “In 2009 they told us that in four or five years we could return to La Magòria... and we are still going around in circles. Well, in fact, since 1964 we have been going back and forth”, complains Forcadell, who is convinced that when Sants finally settles in La Magòria, which is his desire, it will regain a good part of the prestige and social mass it has been losing."The construction project is approved and what we know is that it should start in the year 2027, but we do not have a firm date to play again at La Magòria. Apart from the football field, the complex will include many other facilities. It is a very large project with a very high budget; I hope that the different municipal governments will maintain their confidence in the project", concludes Joan Forcadell, the president of UE Sants, the eternal globetrotter of Barcelona football.