Rayo’s chain reaction
Just months out from Rayo Vallecano’s centenary, fans are rallying to save the stadium at the heart of its community.
During a property boom nobody wants to be the precarious tenant sitting on prime real estate. Rayo Vallecano, however, are used to being where they’re not meant to be.
Paying €90,000 a year to the Madrid regional government (owners of Estadio de Vallecas), it looks like Rayo’s days of cheap rent for the use of Spain’s most unique stadium are numbered.
The Spanish capital is having “a moment,” according to The Economist. “Madrid has become a hot destination for the moneyed classes,” wrote Rachel Sanderson for Bloomberg.
And now, just months out from the club’s centenary, regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso confirmed to Diario AS that the Madrid government and club are in talks to relocate Rayo away from its barrio (neighbourhood) because “it’s becoming increasingly unsustainable to stay in Vallecas.”
“What is really unsustainable is football today,” responded Daniel Verdú in El País, citing the example of the financially-crippled FC Barcelona and its billion-euro stadium redevelopment. “Unsustainable is a club, that nourishes and is nourished by the ecosystem of a community, being forced to leave in favour of an urban development operation.”
Just nine short metro stops south of Madrid’s kilometre zero, Puerta del Sol, the area in and around Rayo’s rickety home is ripe for redevelopment. Vallecas would soon earn a place on the dreaded coolest neighbourhoods in the world list, a precursor to gentrification. The iconic lines of laundry connecting high-rise apartment blocks that date back decades would be replaced by lines of Sunday brunchers waiting to photograph smashed avocado toast and hipster bicycles mounted on walls.
Forcing Rayo to relocate would be a green light for speculation and accumulation.
While such uncertainty would paralyse most other clubs and fanbases, there’s one thing you need to understand about Rayo Vallecano: nothing about Rayo Vallecano makes sense.
Its recent history has been conditioned by chaos but, somehow, Rayo has always managed to bend rather than break. Over the past decade, it has spent more seasons (six) in the Primera Division than the one-club city giants Real Zaragoza, Real Oviedo, Sporting Gijón, and Deportivo La Coruña combined.
Free of great expectations and the back-breaking weight of past glories that continue to prove too heavy for many once-great clubs, there’s a curious sort of breeziness about Rayo that can be traced to its place in a community that shows unwavering support while expecting little in return. In the Primera, Rayo is a yo-yo club playing with house money — the most dangerous type of opponent is one with nothing to lose.
“Rayo Vallecano court more drama than a South American telenovela,” wrote Robbie Dunne in Working Class Heroes — the proposed plan to move Spain’s most barrio-centric team out of its neighbourhood is just the latest twist in the soap opera.
A call to arms…in arms
Four hours before a crucial La Liga clash with their Andalusian amigos from Cádiz on the first Saturday of March, more than 300 Rayo Vallecano fans braved a bitterly cold afternoon in Madrid to form a human chain around the circumference of Estadio de Vallecas.
“We won’t be moved,” they chanted.
With generations of Rayo fans arm in arm — some smoking, others drinking beer — the chain symbolised both the readiness of the people to rally around their flag and the enduring connection between club and community. In their view, the barrio needs the stadium to be given a facelift rather than bulldozers and get-rich-quick urban developments.
“Anyone who understands Rayo and the DNA of the club,” says Paul Reidy, “knows that if you take Rayo Vallecano — by their nature from Vallecas — out of their current area and stick them elsewhere, you lose the essence of the club and what it stands for.”
For the rest of this story and to support independent writing from Spain, please join me over at La Comunidad here:
