Article updated: 17/11/2025
The small town of Tafalla is situated in the heart of Navarra, approximately 25 miles south of Pamplona. Founded in 1925, the town’s senior team is Peña Sport Fútbol Club, which, until the late 1970s, spent most of its time competing in the Navarran regional leagues. Since 1977, however, the club has become something of a stalwart of the Tercera, winning the league title on no fewer than nine occasions. It wasn’t until the turn of the century that the club progressed beyond the fourth level, winning promotion to Segunda B in June 2000. Since then, there have been six further promotions to Segunda B, interspersed with visits back to the Tercera.
Peña Sport initially set up its home at a field called Valmayor, located approximately two kilometres east of Tafalla. In 1927, the club relocated to the district of Barranquiel and a field close to the Convent of San Francisco Javier. This remained their home until 1941, when they moved back to Valmayor and an enclosure called Campo de San Isidro. This was still rudimentary, but it was enclosed and had a decent pitch that drained into the Acequia de Valmayor. Keen to move back into town, the club began developing the current stadium on the site of its former home near the Convent of San Francisco Javier. The Campo Nuevo San Francisco Javier opened on 26 March 1951 with a friendly against Athletic Club de Bilbao.
The Campo de Futbol de San Francisco stands just to the south of town. It holds 4,000 spectators and features a central pavilion on the west side of the ground, which has a small viewing balcony above the dugouts. This structure is flanked by two short covered stands, where five narrow rows of blue bucket seats sit under a propped corrugated roof. Opposite these three fantastic throw-back structures is a more modern, rather spartan half-length covered terrace, to the right of which is an area of open seating. Areas of hard standing occupy each end of the enclosure. The ground was tested to capacity on 25 October 2006 when Peña Sport met local big-wigs CA Osasuna in the last 16 of the Copa del Rey and drew 0-0. It was the first competitive meeting of the clubs, and then, they met again a fortnight later in Pamplona with CA Osasuna running out 4-0 winners.
Since 2010, Peña Sport has won promotion to Segunda B on four occasions, but only once have they avoided immediate relegation from the division. Their 2012-13 campaign saw the club finish in a respectable 15th position, only to finish bottom of the league a year later. Maybe it’s a reflection of the lack of depth in the Navarran Tercera, but between 1996 and 2019, when Peña Sport played at this level, it either won the Tercera title or finished runners-up. That run came to an end with a sixth-placed finish in 2019-20, the first time the club had failed to reach the playoffs since 1990. A year later, normal service was resumed when Peña Sport won its tenth Tercera title.
Peña Sport’s tenth Tercera title coincided with the restructuring of the Spanish football pyramid, with the club earning a place in the new Segunda Federación. Unfortunately, the promotion exposed the old frailties, as Peña Sport won just three of their 34 matches and finished bottom of the league, 27 points from safety. Relegated to the Tercera Federación (the fifth tier), Peña Sport continues to populate the promotion positions and seems destined to remain a big fish in the small pond that is the Navarran section of the Tercera.
Estadios de España 