L’ULTIMA.33

Welcome to L’ULTIMA, an ongoing archive of football iconography and original writing meant to explore football's place in society and the cultural implications of its role in those spaces. The name takes its inspiration from ‘L'ultima occasione,’ a song written by the Italian singer Mina Mazzini in the summer of 1965. This is the thirty-third edition.

Futbol Popular

Salamanca is as close to Porto on its west as it is to Madrid on its east, give or take a handful of kilometers. It’s hilly and built upon the río Tormes in Castilla y León, an autonomous community in northwest Spain. During the war, the city sided with the Nationalists and el Generalissimo Franco named it the de facto capital of the fascist FET y de las JONS party. These days it’s known more for its university, the oldest in all of Spain, which is a type of fascism in and of itself, I suppose.

Unión Deportiva Salamanca was founded in the spring of 1907 by a group of Irish students at the Universidad de Salamanca who sought refuge in Castilla y León to escape Britain’s penal laws. By 1923, the club was officially recognized by Dionisio Ridruejo, a Franco propagandist turned oppositional critic, in Café Novelty, the coffeehouse in Plaza Mayor that Gonzalo Torrente Ballester and other members of the Generación del ‘36 frequented. Los Charros played their first match in the Segunda División in 1939 and spent the better part of seventy-five years oscillating between it and the Tercera, save for a ten-year spell in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s in La Liga.

U.D. Salamanca folded on its ninetieth anniversary in 2013, as is the fate of most clubs with a rich history who cannot outrun the specter of debt. From its ashes, a faction of the club’s supporters founded Unionistas de Salamanca Club de Fútbol to honor its memory, its badge emblazoned with IN MEMORIAM U.D.S. 1923–2013. Unionistas are owned entirely by the two thousand seven hundred or so members that pay fees each year in exchange for a voice in operations, each of them hoping to ensure the club doesn't meet the same fate as its predecessor.

And it’s working. Unionistas began in amateur regional football and within four years have been promoted three tiers up to Segunda División B. On Wednesday, they played Real Madrid in the revamped Copa del Rey’s round of thirty-two at the three thousand-seat Las Pistas. Twenty-three-year-old Álvaro Romero scored. After the match, Madridistas and Unionistas exchanged kits and Romero said, ‘Dani Carvajal gave me his shirt—the one he wore during the game—and I don't know what cologne he uses, but it smells great.’

Typography Sunday

Mexico 1970 FIFA World Cup / Final: Brazil 4 – 1 Italy / c/o 1 Shilling (1/-)

Goodreads

How Charlton fans united and ousted the club's unfit owner

After five years of turmoil, supporters at The Valley are now looking to the future with relief, apprehension, and excitement.