COLUMN: Not fit for purpose – Vallecas, a president and a football club fighting impending doom

People came from abroad. People came from Asturias. People came from all around the region of Madrid. For nothing. Against all logic and as an absolute first, the match between Rayo Vallecano and Real Oviedo was postponed without any logical motive. It was pouring in Madrid, yes, but that didn’t impede matches from the rest of the football pyramid going ahead. There was no respect for the usual protocol that obliges cancelations to be announced with enough time so that the away visitors avoid an unnecessary and useless trip.

And, worst of all, there was no indication by the authorities who have the legal mechanisms to call off a match because the issue was exclusively on Rayo Vallecano’s fault. Better said, it was Raul Martin Presa, the detested owner, who possesses sole responsibility. A man who has been the owner of a football club that he seems committed to destroy, brick by brick, and yet, that manages to keep on living against all odds.

Rayo are one of the most beloved football clubs in the world. Not Spain, the world. They are one of the few survivors of those working-class football entities that have been gradually replaced by foreign owners and plastic identities. They play in the same ground where they have been for decades; supporters walk the same streets, players and staff join in for a drink in the same local pubs and the club breathes localism. In Spain they are a needle in a haystack. There are other barrio clubs, but none is as successful as Rayo, particularly over the last four decades.

Promoted to the first tier for the very first time in the late 1970s and became a La Liga regular in the 1990s, a time when visiting Vallecas was like feeling the world had stopped right there and then. The club was not always what it is today. Nor is Vallecas. A small village away from Madrid, Vallecas became first a slum town, where the poor from different parts of the new Castille – Andalusia, Extremadura and Castilla la Mancha provinces – landed in hope of finding in Madrid a better life. Some fled from extreme poverty, others from political persecution after the Civil War. There they bonded and created a strong communal spirit that as lived ever since even if the then village was later absorbed by the ever-expanding urban Madrid and the slums became full of immigrants from Africa, South America, Asia or Eastern Europe, come the end of the 1980s.

Vallecas was poor, ethnically diverse and had to endure the spite of the posh people of Madrid. They were also extremely creative – the risque movies, the rumba or the hip-hop cultural movement in Spain began there – passionate and knew how to defend the fellow men. Wilfried Agbonavare came to know this well. The Nigerian goalkeeper became a cult in Vallecas after suffering recurrent racial abuse in most Spanish football grounds and was later immortalised in a painted mural outside the ground. A stadium that was more than just the footballing home of the club. It was the temple for the community in Vallecas, a place of worship, encircled by its busy and chaotic streets, where anything could happen, tight in space, but with ample space for miracles. A stadium who has been left for dead ever since.

Cuando no te quieren, no encajas, no te identificas … lo mismo la solución eres tú #Rayo #ADRV pic.twitter.com/drO3ULAt3w

— Dani Huerta Aranda (@UEFAcomDanielH) February 8, 2026

That same stadium is the cornerstone of Rayo’s current situation. The appointment of first the brilliant Andoni Iraola and then, his former deputy, the no-less promising, Inigo Perez, has elevated Rayo to unexpected heights. Their board has done everything in their power to have the club demoted to the second tier. The youth setups are in shambles, the once proud women’s team left for dead, and the training facilities are a joke for a club that plays in European competitions. The same must be said of their football ground.

For anyone who has visited Vallecas, to pass through those gates is like travelling back in time to the 1990s. Nothing has been done to improve the ground’s safety or commodity, aside from some minor council reforms that were obligatory due to safety concerns. It’s like a theme park for horror film-lovers. Not only for supporters but for players, staff and referees, who usually complain they don’t even get clean towels. Supporters must queue for hours to get a ticket, because the club refuses to sell online. It seems as if anything the ownership does is to prevent the club from expanding or, at least, to have their faithful supporters a nice experience.

It kind of is. Presa bought the club for 1 euro – with all the debt that came with it, of course – probably hoping that one day, he would be able to sell the lands where the stadium was built for a small fortune, as the housing crisis in Madrid loomed on the city limits. He had an agreement with the regional government to build a new ground, owned by them, not the club, on the outskirts of Vallecas, one of those pieces of land with nothing around it, as usually happens in southern Madrid, until buildings start to pop up like mushrooms. That would solve his personal financial situation, relocate the club to a place far from their sphere of influence – where they have been soundly critical of the regional government for decades – and turn them into another plastic institution.

It would be the death of Rayo as we know it. Supporters know it, players and staff know it, the press knows it, and Presa is not even ashamed of saying so. Here is a guy that once tried to sign a Ukrainian forward with links to the far right to play for arguably the most left-wing football club in Western Europe. The same who invited the heads of the neo-fascist political force Vox to the presidential box just to make a point that the club was his and his alone. And that will cost Rayo eventually more than they can afford.

Last Saturday it was Presa who called for the match to be cancelled after players refused to go on a pitch that had been recently installed, despite Madrid nearing the top of the charts in recent years for rainfall that week, and that would cause safety problems for the players. The dressing room forced Presa’s hand and if Rayo will leave this situation unscratched is probably because Javier Tebas, the La Liga chairman, was once his lawyer and shares much of his ideals and goals. Yet Rayo’s image abroad was tarnished, again, and the club are on the verge of a relegation battle few expected after a brilliant season where they managed to finish in the top eight to claim a place in the Conference League last season.

Rayo Vallecano know, as a football institution, that under Presa they are doomed. Sooner or later there will be no Iraola or Perez to save the day. Sadly, there’s no one bold enough to take the necessary steps to try and buy the club from the businessman, someone who understands and respects the club’s true identity. Dark times have been something of the norm if you are from Vallecas but now Rayo are facing a challenge that may cost their very existence. The shambolic events of the last Saturday early kick-off may be just the first step of a deescto hell that many await smiling while others close their eyes in sheer panic.

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