COPA DEL REY
Who are Unionistas de Salamanca, FC Barcelona’s Copa del Rey Round of 16 rivals?
The side from Salamanca have progressed to the last sixteen of the competition for the first time in the club’s short history.
May 19th (2013) marked a dark day for football in the town of Salamanca, as the club that represented the famous university city for more than 90 years played their last game at the Estadio Helmantico in the Spanish third tier.
A month after that last game in 2B against Tenerife, Union Deportivo Salamanca were no more after a legal ruling ordered the institution to be wound up after a series of increasing debts were left unpaid.
With a population of 150,000 the city was left bereft of their football club with Salamanca joining the ranks of the likes of Palencia, Murcia, Alicante, Xerez and Ourense, as fans of their local football clubs were orphaned after unscrupulous owners poured unsustainable levels of debts on the clubs ultimately leading to their dissolution.
Despite efforts of continuity in Salamanca, initially via Salamanca Athletic Club and later via CF Salmantino UDS who later bought back the rights for the old UDS club logo and were later awarded the right to be called Salamanca CF UDS in 2018, many other fans in the city felt that the time was right for a new dawn and embarked on a project that paid tribute to the original UDS.
A new dawn in Salamanca
Unionistas de Salamanca was officially founded on 26 August (2013), and were formed on a fan-based run model with members having key input on the running of the club with one of the key principles in the club’s philosophy was to preserve the memory of the now defunct UD Salamanca.
The club started out in the lowest tier of the regional Castilla y Leon region and over the years following a series of promotions have now secured a place in the third tier (1A RFEF) of the Spanish game.
The club qualified for the Copa del Rey in the 2018-19 season and after beating Atletico Baleares and Deportivo la Coruña in the first rounds, the club were handed a dream cup tie against Real Madrid. Despite the possibility of switching the game to the Spanish capital and potentially generate more matchday income, the club were determined that local fans were to be given the privilege of seeing their team at home rather than 200 km from Salamanca with the game ultimately ending in a 1-3 win for the Spanish giants.
The club moved from their old ‘Las Pistas’ ground in the shadow of the Estadio Helmantico to their current residence at the 4,750 capacity Reina Sofia stadium back in 2020-21 and this will be the very ground where Xavi Hernandez takes his FC Barcelona side next week.
Having already disposed of Gernika, Sporting Gijon and top flight Villarreal in this season’s Copa del Rey, the club who operate with the motto ‘el fútbol es del pueblo’ (football is the people’s game) now brace themselves for another spell in the limelight as they face the 31-time winners of the Spanish Cup next week.