Unió Esportiva Sants

UE Sants was born on 26 April 1922 from the merger of four entities in Barcelona's working class Sants district: two football clubs, FC Internacional and Centre d'Esports de Sans, and two cycling clubs, Club Ciclisme de Sans and Velo Sport, with Josep Roig Chovar as first president. From that double soul came the feat that projects it worldwide: the cycling section took over the organisation of the Volta a Catalunya, the third oldest stage race on the planet, behind only the Tour and the Giro, a responsibility the entity holds to this day, and the Volta leader's jersey is white with green stripes in tribute to the club's colours. In football, Sants came close to promotion to Spain's Segunda División several times before the Civil War, but fate reserved another epic: in 1964, the old ground on Galileu street was expropriated to make way for Avinguda de Madrid, and the club became a nomad in its own city, wandering through Magòria and other borrowed grounds for decades, with a former president summing up the condition in one bitter phrase, we are the Palestinians of football. A centenarian since 2022, with 35 teams in competition and the motto Orgull Santsenc, Sants remains proof that a club is a neighbourhood, even when the neighbourhood took away its pitch.