Honour to Sabadell — Terrace Edition

Words: Gorka Urresola

Images: Gorka Urresola

The afternoon of May 27, 2024, marked one of the darkest episodes in the history of Centre d’Esports Sabadell.

The 3–3 draw in Lugo was not enough for the Arlequinats—the nickname given to the team because of the checkered design of their shirt, which resembles the traditional comic character Harlequin—to secure survival and put a disastrous season behind them.

As a result, after seventeen years moving between the second and third tiers of Spanish football, the club was relegated to the Segunda Federación, the fourth division in the Spanish league system.

They had only found themselves in such hostile territory on two previous occasions. To make matters worse, that year the club was celebrating its 120th anniversary.

However, after a meteoric return to the Primera Federación, football had one of those surprises in store that can only truly be understood by those who have seen their team fall from great heights and then return to where it belongs.

Because, let us remember, Sabadell—with fourteen seasons in the top-flight, the last of them in 1988—is no ordinary club. Even less so when we recall that it has played in the second division on forty-three occasions.

©Gorka Urresola/ Terrrace Edition. CE Sabadell flag.

It is a symbol of Catalan football and of a city that, having originated as an agricultural settlement, embraced industrialization and became one of Catalonia’s major textile hubs.

Therefore, after several years in pursuit of a promotion that would return them, for now, to the second division, what happened this season—contrasting with that afternoon in May 2024—will also never be forgotten.

A city united by a club, rediscovering its passion in an iconic stadium that holds the record for being the first venue where a match was played under artificial light in 1912.

It was the year, and under the guidance of Ferran Costa and another record—the 14- match unbeaten run (surpassed only by Bayern Munich, incidentally)—the blue- and-white team managed, through two sublime comebacks, to return the Sabadell crest to the second tier of Spanish football.

Direct promotion was within reach, but the playoff hurdle did not stop Sabadell from celebrating their long-awaited promotion after staging comebacks against Real Madrid’s reserve team in the semi-finals and Zamora in the final.

The city of Sabadell erupted with joy. As the club anthem goes: “Honour to Sabadell. Honour to the city. Long live our ever-beloved club.”