BarcelonaIn mid-2017, in the noble offices of Espanyol they received with some skepticism the announcement that a group of parakeet fans would revive some of the 12 historical sections that the club came to have between 1912 and 2002. economic led Espanyol to abolish them, so that, of all of them, currently only one remains within its structure, women’s football. Inside, the white-and-blue club thought that this initiative would be anecdotal, that its journey would not last more than a year or two and that it would not have any significance. The reality, however, is that this Wednesday the Spanish Sports Sections will be five years old with a solid state of health.
From next year they will be present in five sports (roller hockey, volleyball, basketball, handball and futsal, which will premiere in the 2022-23 season) that will bring together about 24 teams and more than 300 athletes. SD Espanyol, which is legally constituted as an independent sports entity of the football club, have invested just over half a million euros in the total of these five years. For the next academic year, they plan to manage a budget close to 290,000 euros. So far, the project has been fed mainly by the 25 sponsors it has, who have contributed about 80% of the revenue. The rest of the budget is completed by the contributions of the members (they have about 640 and hope to exceed 1,000 next season) and the quotas of the base players.
“We are surviving year after year and we are growing as much as we can,” the president and one of the sponsors and promoters of SD Espanyol, Arnau Baqué, told ARA. The project still has several shortcomings. Some structural, such as the lack of facilities available to host the training and matches of their teams. “It is extraordinarily difficult to play in Barcelona, where there is a collapse in terms of public facilities, and not even adding private or subsidized schools can assume the full level of demand,” laments Baqué, who moved to the ‘Espanyol a proposal that could solve, in large part, this problem: to include a small pavilion within the project of new sports city that the club wants to build with part of the resources of CVC that must be allocated to new sports infrastructures. “The space could have a gym and would be useful for the club’s teams and sections, although right now it is a very green option,” said the lawyer.
The other big problem of the sections is economic: “The project can be and must be self-sufficient, but it is difficult to combine this with the sporting perspectives of many sports where we are playing roof. The most difficult leap is to go from being amateurs to professionals “, explains Baqué, who warns that the current economic context of inflation not only complicates the task of finding new sponsors, but also endangers the continuity of those who already have them. “Despite the shortcomings, which prevent us from defining ourselves as a professional club, we have a method and every year we go further. We need to value everything we have achieved “, he claims.
In roller hockey they are in the Second Division, which is below the OK League; in basketball, one step away from the EBA League; in handball and volleyball, also in the highest Catalan category, while in futsal they will debut in the fourth state category. Sportingly speaking, the project is managing to attract talent and is approaching the top categories, an elite they had stepped on when they were inside the club. Any promotion from now on will require a significant leap in terms of resources in an entity that, for the time being, maintains a non-labor structure based on volunteering.
Espanyol is open to collaborating
The growth and consolidation of the project over these five years has led to Espanyol starting to see SD Espanyol with a better eye. Chen Yansheng, owner of Rastar Group and Espanyol, however, has repeatedly insisted that the club’s focus, and therefore the area where it will allocate resources, will be football. The Chinese employer still does not envisage the integration of the sections within its structure. Nevertheless, with the new general manager, Mao Ye, the club and sections are beginning to look favorably on establishing ways of collaboration that do not involve any financial expense to the entity.
SD Espanyol consider it a big step forward for the club to extend their hand to them after years of turning their backs on them. “There is still a long way to go, but at least now there is a fluid dialogue,” says Baqué. In May, the two parties held a meeting in which Espanyol publicly acknowledged the work of disseminating Spanishness in the sections and opened the door, in addition, to define possible ways of collaboration for the course. next to be specified at a future meeting. Espanyol admits its interest “in establishing a relationship framework where steps are taken in the relationship and the two entities can help each other.”
SD Espanyol, who keep the dream of joining the club in the future, will start for the moment by putting on the table initiatives that do not cost Espanyol money: from participating in supporters club gatherings to asking for support when their teams play for Catalonia to have a presence on the club’s social networks or to establish an agreement so that their players have membership cards at a better price. It’s time to build bridges.
