Pontevedra: O Meu Vicio. Love football and vice in Galicia

Words: James Trunkwald

Images: James Trunkwald

I’ve recently come to understand the Galician phrase ‘O Meu Vicio’—my vice— as a motto to describe my relationship with football.

When I think about it, I don’t actually enjoy the 90 minutes of football I relentlessly watch each week but I can’t help myself and return to the stadium, after every loss and every draw.

However, there are some weekends it’s all worth it.

This weekend was one of them.

My mum always asks me why I go back and I always say what brings me back time and time again is the feeling of belonging; seeing the same people week in week out and the camaraderie.

This feeling of belonging and togetherness is at its strongest when I’m among the fans of a team you don’t support simply because they play beautiful, free-flowing football, but follow out of love for your club and the town or city it represents.

©James Trunkwald/ Terrace Edition. Pontevedra CF supporters.

I’ve only found this feeling twice in my life: with my hometown team, Huddersfield Town, and now with Pontevedra, a small club situated in the rainy north of Spain.

I see many similarities with my team back in England: both are small clubs surrounded by larger ones, their fleeting first division days in the past, yet the support of the few who follow remains as strong as ever, and both are fiercely proud of their hometown and region.

Pontevedra is a club that really encapsulates what I have come to know as ‘fútbol modesto’—modest football.

Fans of larger, more elitist clubs may turn their noses up at smaller clubs like these, but I always wear it as a badge of honour.

I have only been watching Pontevedra for a brief time, but I already feel like a member of the family.

The new friends I have made in these few months may have grown up coming to their stadium, Pasarón, every weekend as a child falling in love with the game and team over a number of months, years, and decades.

Despite that, they haven’t made me an outcast as a foreigner, instead they have done so much to make me feel welcome that I couldn’t help but fall in love with the club, the city, and the people.

With Pontevedra being such a small community it’s been easy to get to know many people, even if we don’t speak each week or see each other at every game.

Everybody smiles, offering a warm welcome and considering me a true member of the community that they hold so dear.

Yet, some weekends really make it worth supporting teams like these and last weekend was one of those beautiful weekends, the bad days all forgotten about.

To fans of Celta Vigo it might not mean as much as it’s ‘just the B team’ but to us it just means more, and for one afternoon it truly is beautiful to be Pontevedrés.

I love football, but it only truly matters to me when I have a team to support, a town to root for. That’s what makes the terraces, the bars, and the stories shared so special.

With Huddersfield Town, I feel it in my hometown, surrounded by the same faces I have grown up around season after season, year after year.

When I moved to Galicia I never envisioned finding a team that would even come close to Huddersfield Town but with Pontevedra CF, despite not having grown up supporting this team, I’ve discovered that same feeling, in this small club nestled on the rainy north coast of Spain.

Football, for me, has never been just about the game itself, but about the people, about belonging and I look forward to spending many a season following the Granate all over Spain.