Article updated: 17/10/2025
At the turn of the century, three promotions in the space of 4 years took Club Deportivo Guijuelo from provincial obscurity to the third tier of Spanish football. This small club, based just 30 miles south of Salamanca, defied the odds and the experts for the better part of 15 years, as it consistently avoided relegation. There was a degree of justification in these predictions of foreboding, as the town of Guijuelo is more famous for the quality of its world-renowned Jamón Iberico rather than its footballing pedigree. However, survival in Segunda B continued to be achieved, albeit by the skin of their teeth on a couple of occasions, before COVID-19 and the reorganisation of the Spanish football pyramid put pay to their lofty status.
Formed in 1973, CD Guijuelo is the first and only senior club to represent this small town of 5,500 inhabitants. Football had been played on an open field to the south of town, known as the Campo de Dehesa, since the end of the Civil War. Its surface required major renovation before CD Guijuelo played its first official match on 6 October 1974, losing 1-4 to Sporting Educación y Descanso de Salamanca. CD Guijuelo spent much of the first 25 years of its existence playing in the lower reaches of the Regional de Salamanca, but things began to stir around the turn of the 21st Century. The club reached the Regional Preferente in the 2000-01 season, and won the title a year later. CD Guijuelo’s debut in the Tercera was impressive, finishing fourth in the league, but struggling in a playoff group that featured San Sebastián de los Reyes, Deportivo B & Sporting B. The following season saw the club earn an improved third place in the league, then overcome the challenges of Oviedo Astur Club de Fútbol and CD Móstoles and win promotion to Segunda B in June 2004.
CD Guijuelo’s debut in the third tier saw the club play an attractive, attacking style of football, but ultimately finish in seventeenth place and drop back to the Tercera. A year later, playoff victories over UP Langreo and Real Madrid C earned promotion back to Segunda B. Here the club has remained, earning two impressive ninth-place finishes in 2007-08 & 08-09. Results then tailed off, and in June 2010, relegation to the Tercera was only avoided with victory over Espanyol B in the relegation playoffs. The 2011-12 season saw the club produce its best season yet in the third tier, finishing seventh and just 4 points off the playoffs. Highlights of the season included a 2-1 win over their local rivals UD Salamanca, a result that ensured that CD Guijuelo would finish above them in the final standings.
The 2012-13 pre-season was a tumultuous affair with CD Guijuelo offering their resignation to the league. Citing financial difficulties and the failure to appoint a club president, the first team was to be wound up, although it would continue to compete in junior leagues. This stirred the local community into action, and the first team was given a stay of execution, deferring their first fixture in the Segunda B 2012-13 season. They eventually committed themselves to Segunda B, albeit with a drastically reduced playing staff and budget. Even with these constraints, CD Guijuelo prevailed, finishing the season in 15th position. Incredibly, CD Guijuelo regrouped and a year later finished fourth in the league, thus qualifying for the play-offs to La Segunda. Unfortunately, they lost 0-1 on aggregate to CD Leganés. The remainder of the decade saw the club record four top-ten finishes, including the 2019-20 season, which was curtailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Being a small club, the lack of income hit CD Guijuelo hard, and they struggled throughout the following season, eventually dropping to the newly formed Tercera Federación when the leagues were restructured. CD Guijuelo won their first Tercera title in the 2021-22 season, losing just one match and finishing 11 points clear of the second-place club. Automatic promotion earned them a place in the Segunda Federación, and in their second season at this level, a fourth-place finish saw CD Guijuelo reach the playoffs but lose to UD Logroñes.
CD Guijuelo’s home stadium is a small enclosure set within the grounds of the town’s sports centre. Whilst the sports centre opened in the early 1970s, the site of the pitch has hosted football since the early 1940s. For the first three decades at the ground, CD Guijuelo played on a lime and sand pitch, which was replaced with an artificial surface in the summer of 2002. The stadium’s principal feature is a series of three covers on the west side of the ground, at the centre of which is the larger and older of the trio. This includes a few palcos (private seating areas) and a small media booth at its rear. Flanking this older cover are two newer covers that were added in the summer of 2011. This upgrade also saw the installation of a new artificial surface. Behind the stands is a white-washed building that houses the changing facilities. The remaining three sides are surrounded by hard standing, leaving the ground with a capacity of 2,000, which can be increased to around 2,300 with the addition of temporary seating at either end of the enclosure. The limitations of the Campo Municipal were exposed in 2017, when CD Guijuelo drew Atlético Madrid in the Copa del Rey, and the tie was played at the Estadio Helmántico in Salamanca. In 2020, the stadium was renamed the Estadio Luis Ramos, in honour of the club’s former president.
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