Article updated: 17/09/2025
When you hail from a town where a bridge receives more recognition than your football club, you know that life is going to be an uphill struggle. In fact, in its 110 years as a football club, Club Portugalete has never attained anything approaching the heights of Alberto Palacio’s world-famous transporter bridge.
Portugalete is now effectively a north-west suburb of Greater Bilbao; however, at the turn of the 20th century, it was primarily known as a resort where the rich industrialists of Bilbao lived. This was not exactly prime footballing stock! However, this did not deter the locals from forming Athletic de Portugalete in 1899. Within a decade, several local clubs had formed, and two of them, Portugalete Foot-Ball Club and Deportivo de Portugalete, merged in 1909 to form Club Deportivo Portugalete. The new club entered the second division of the Vizcaya regional championship and in 1912, finished runner-up to Arenas Club, receiving a yellow and black striped kit as a reward. These became the club colours, and in 1915, the club beat Racing Santander to earn a place in the Campeonato Regional del Norte. Their debut season in what had become Spain’s premier league competition was a disaster, with Portugalete finishing bottom with one win from their twelve matches. As a result of this poor showing, the club disbanded and did not reappear until 1921, when, as Portugalete Foot-Ball Club, they entered the lower reaches of the Vizcayan league. Matches were played on an open field known as La Florida, and it almost certainly would have overlapped the current home.
Over the next 15 years, Portugalete FC played in the regional leagues before ceasing all activity following the outbreak of the Civil War. The club was dissolved, and its few assets were passed to the San Juan Bautista Hospital. In 1944, a new club was formed, and Alfredo Santamaría, president of Portugalete FC between 1932 & 1937, proposed using the name Portugalete Club de Fútbol. The field at La Florida was not an option, due to damage during the Civil War, so the club became tenants at San Mamés & the Campo de Ibaiondo. In 1946, the club moved to Campo de San Roque, a basic ground that had an athletics track and a small pavilion. Over the next few years, results steadily improved, and on 8 July 1951, they beat Santona 2-0 to earn promotion to the Tercera. Elevation to the higher league meant that the club needed to find a new home, and on Christmas Day 1951, it opened La Florida, a simple enclosed ground to the south of the town. Life in the Tercera was difficult, but the club achieved a high finish of sixth in 1953-54, before dropping back to the regional leagues in May 1958.
Portugalete then spent all but seven of the next 43 seasons in the regional league, making brief appearances in the Tercera in the 1960s and 1980s. 2001 saw the club end 12 years in the regional leagues with promotion back to the Tercera, and over the next four seasons, the club grew in stature, before winning its first Tercera league title in 2004-05. In the playoffs, Portugalete beat Cantabrians SD Noja and the Aragonese Utebo FC to earn a place in Segunda B. Their first season in Segunda B ended in relegation, with the club finishing 19th, seven points from safety. Back in the Tercera, Portugalete performed consistently, winning the title in 2007-08, but lost out to Villanueva de Cordoba in the playoffs. The Tercera title was won again in 2014-15, but immediate hopes of promotion were dashed by CF Talavera de La Reina in the Champions playoff. Victories over Martos CD & CD Cayón finally earned a second promotion to Segunda B, but the 2015-16 campaign ended identically to that of a decade earlier, 19th place & relegation back to the Tercera.
A further promotion to Segunda B was achieved in the COVID-19-shortened season of 2019-20. Portugalete were top of the regional Tercera when the league was suspended in March 2020. The playoffs were held in July at the Campo de Sarriena in Leioa, with Portugalete edging out local rivals Sestao River by a single goal in the final. The following 2020-21 season was again disrupted by the pandemic, with clubs playing 28 games over two phases. Portugalete was eventually relegated, and following the RFEF’s restructuring of the Spanish football pyramid, they dropped to the Tercera Federación, or fifth tier.
La Florida is a simple stadium, and if you look closely, it still retains some of the original features from over 70 years ago. Regrettably, the old changing rooms that stood at the north end of the ground were demolished in 2016. You can, however, see sections of the original lattice brick wall around the edge of the playing surface. The main features nowadays include a full-length stand on the west side of the ground, which has five rows of seats in yellow and black bands. This is covered by a shallow cantilevered roof and dates from the early 1990s, when it replaced a covered terrace. Parts of the cover from the old terrace were repurposed and incorporated within the stand on the side of the artificial pitch directly to the west of La Florida. A new changing block and club offices were also built in the early nineties in the south-east corner of the ground, and this two-tier L-shaped building also features a viewing balcony. The newest part of the ground is the east terrace, which was added in 2005 for the club’s debut in Segunda B. In 2023, a covered seated stand was added on the halfway line. 75 meters in length, the stand seats 665 and is covered by a bright perspex cantilevered roof. La Florida has a capacity of 5,000 and is a pleasingly straightforward enclosure, with a few standout features. Perfectly suited to Club Portugalete’s needs in the lower reaches of the Spanish league system.
Estadios de España 