Huelva has a
very special place in the history of Spanish Football. For this dusty industrial
port close to the south west border with Portugal, saw the birth of the modern
game in a country that now dominates the world at club and international level.
Huelva may not have been the first location to experience ex-patriot muddied
oafs kicking the bejesus out of a pig’s bladder, but it is where Huelva
Recreation Club was founded in 1889. Thus making its direct descendants, Real
Club Recreativo de Huelva, El abuelo del
fútbol español or the Grandfather of Spanish Football.
 |
Now show some respect to your elders. Recre's crest
and their mascot that was not modelled on Peter Reid |
To find the
very beginning, we need to travel back to 1873 and the arrival of the Rio Tinto
Mining Company in the hills some forty miles to the north west of Huelva. Phil
Ball in his excellent book Morbo, describes how British troops fighting in the
Carlist War, played a match in September 1874 against navvies working on the
railway link from the mines to Huelva. Rio Tinto formed a club for the workers
in the town that had sprung up around the mines and Club Inglés or Rio Tinto FC,
as they were to be known would go through various phases and mergers before folding
during the Civil War. The rail link reached Huelva in late 1874 and almost
immediately, a community of British ex-patriots sprang up in the city. The barrio de los ingles was built to house
the great and the good of the mining company and one of them, Dr William
Alexander Mackay set up a sports and social club practising in the very English
sports of Cricket, Lawn Tennis and Football. The Recreation Club, as it became known, would participate in matches
against ships crews arriving in Huelva and against Club de Regatas de Sevilla.
This was a similar club that had been set up in the Andalucian capital by
German-Spanish businessman Wilhem Sundheim de la Cueva. Sundhiem, who had been
central to attracting British investment in the mines, convened a meeting on 18 December 1889 that would see the formation of Huelva Recreation Club.
 |
| Estadio del Velódromo in the early 1920's |
Whilst
initially a multi-recreational club, footballing activity grew quickly and several
matches were played against Club Inglés Rio
Tinto and Sevilla Foot-ball Club,
who they met for the first time on 8 March 1890. The club used fields owned by
the local gas company, one in the centre of town, where the current Guardia
Civil is located and another near the mouth of the Rio Odiel, close to the current Estadio Nuevo Colombino. In December 1890, the Rio Tinto company
purchased land just to the south of the city and Huelva Recreation Club set
about developing the site. It took 18 months for the ground to be properly
developed, but finally on 20 August 1892 the Estadio del Velódromo opened for
business. As the name suggests, the Velódromo was also suitable for cycling and
other sports and on occasion, the footballing arm played matches back on the
fields owned by the gas company. By the turn of the twentieth century, football had begun
to dominate club activity and the club took up permanent residence at the Estadio
del Velódromo. A pavilion was added to the site in 1903 and in 1906 the club
accepted an invite from Madrid FC to play in a tournament in the Spanish Capital. In 1909, the club sought and received royal patronage and became known as Real
Club Recreativo de Huelva. The Andalucian championship was won on three
occasions between 1903 and 1917, but with the rise of professionalism, the club
faded in prominence, so much so that when the national leagues were formed in
1928, Recreativo did not receive an invite.
 |
Always a basic enclosure, the Estadio del Velódromo featured
four strips of narrow terracing & a pavilion in the south east corner |
Recreativo
did play in the inaugural Tercera championsip of 1929-30, winning the regional
title before losing to Cartagena FC in the play-offs. The same would fate would
befall the club a year later when it lost out to Celta Vigo in the play-offs.
The following season saw an event that would shake the club to the core. On 25
October 1931, Recreativo was playing Real Betis in a regional championship
match, the winner of which would almost certainly qualify for the national
championship. With Betis leading 1-2, the referee was hit by a stone thrown
from the crowd who were less than pleased with his decision making. He threatened
to abandon the match, but was persuaded to carry on and Betis hung on to win
1-2. The local Southern Federation, who had a strained relationship with Recreativo,
fined the club an astonishing 17,000 pesetas. Recreativo appealed and won
support from many non-Sevilla based clubs, who were also tired of the Southern Federation’s perceived bias towards teams from the Andalucian capital. The National Federation stepped in and suspended the fine, but banned Recreativo from using
their name for a period of five years and forced them to leave the Southern Federation, in effect forcing it to reorganise. So on 12 December 1931, the club was renamed
Onuba Foot-ball Club, taking its name from a small club that existed in Huelva between
1910 and 1913 and in October 1932, Onuba FC joined the Western Federation
 |
| Recreativo playing at the Estadio del Velódromo in the mid 1950's |
Onuba FC dominated the Western Federation in the years leading up to the Civil War, then following the end of fighting, was readmitted into the Southern Federation. It was also admitted to the reformed La Segunda, which thanks to government interference was structured to include as wide a regional representation as possible. Onuba finished sixth in that 1939-40 season and was relegated to the Tercera. In 1945 the club successfully requested the reinstatement of its name and a year later won its third Tercera title, but failed once again in the play-offs. It was the same story in 1950-51 when another title was followed by a further failure in the play-offs. With the growth of the game in the fifties and Recreativo attracting larger crowds, work started on a new ground half a mile to the north east of the Estadio del Velódromo. Recreativo saw out their time at the Velódromo with another Tercera title and finally found success in the play-offs. UD Melilla and Elche CF were defeated and Recreativo said goodbye the old stadium and travelled to the new Estadio Colombino and La Segunda for the start of the 1957-58 season.
 |
June 1956 and the Estadio Colombino takes shape in the top right corner
whilst the antiquated Estadio del Velódromo awaits the start of its final season |
Work had begun on the new stadium in February 1955 when the local municipality purchased a plot of land for the club in the district of Isla Chica for 69,000 pesetas. Architects Miguel Rodríguez Cordero and Ricardo Anadón Frutos were commissioned to design a modern stadium that featured a full length seated grandstand with a cantilevered roof and an athletics track. The rest of the stadium was made up of a single tier of terracing giving it an overall capacity of 20,000. At the southern end of the ground was an elaborate gateway and a series of raised arches that stood above the terracing. From here you could look down upon a formal garden that was all part of the 15 million peseta budget. The ground was inaugurated on 6 September 1957 when Recreativo played a combined side featuring players from Real Madrid and Athletic Club Bilbao. The first season in their new home was not a success and Recreativo was relegated. They bounced back and played the 1959-60 season in La Segunda, only to be relegated again. Some stability was achieved following promotion back to the second tier in 61-62, when Recreativo embarked on a seven-year stay in the second division. In reality, Recreativo never came close to promotion to the top flight, and finally dropped back to the Tercera in May 1968, from which there would be no immediate return.
 |
| The pride of 1950's Huelva. The Estadio Colombino & the rather grandiose gardens |
The 1970's did not start well with lowly finishes in the Tercera. Results gradually improved and Recreativo won promotion to La Segunda in 1974. Unlike the previous visits to the second tier, the club avoided a relegation battle and eventually started to challenge for promotion. The 1977-78 saw the club win 18 and draw 10 of its 38 matches, which was good enough to secure runners-up position and a place in the top flight for the first time. The 1978-79 season proved to be a difficult campaign with Recreativo winning just 8 matches and finishing bottom of La Primera. What's more, the club overstretched itself financially and was plunged into an economic crisis on its return to the second division. Unable to compete financially, Recreativo did well to remain in La Segunda throughout the eighties, although they never truly managed to compete at the top end of the table. Relegation to Segunda 2b and further financial woes followed in in 1990. The best part of the 1990's saw Recreativo struggle to get beyond the promotion play-offs, but finally in 1998, the club was dealt a relatively easy play-off group and ascended to La Segunda.
 |
| The fans out in force for one of the last games at the old stadium |
Promotion to La Segunda meant that the club had to become a limited company and in order to raise the necessary capital Recreativo sold their only asset, the Estadio Colombino to the understanding municipality. The club played on at the old stadium and had a remarkable escape in the 1999-00 season when finishing 21st in the league, but avoided relegation. This was thanks to the demotion of CP Merida and CD Logrones for financial irregularities and Atletico Madrid B's demotion following the relegation of its first team. The club took full advantage of its reprieve and so would start the most successful period in its history. However this success would take place away from the old Estadio Colombino. Recreativo had done little in the way of improvements to the stadium in the past 40-odd years and it showed. Blue and white bucket seats had been added to the grandstand and the east side, reducing the capacity to 13,000, but it was purely cosmetic. The stadium was old and falling to pieces and not fit for La Segunda, let alone an assault on promotion to the top flight. Luckily the municipality had a plan. It was redeveloping the waterside area to the south west of the city, which went by the romantic name of Barriada de Pescadería or Fish Slum. The plans included a modern 21,000 seat stadium on the site of the former gas company's field where Recreativo had played some 100 years before.
 |
| The Estadio Colombino awaits the demolition teams |
The old stadium saw its last league action on 9 December 2001 when Recreativo was held to a 0-0 draw by Levante. The municipality and the Andalucian government then held protracted discussions over the future use of the land, all of which meant that the old stadium fell into disrepair. The demolition teams finally got to grips with the old ground in 2007, levelling everything except the southern terrace and the old gateway that stood next the gardens. By 2010 that had been demolished as well and the site is now just open wasteland, still awaiting a plan that the municipality and the government can agree upon. The site of the Estadio del Velódromo can be found on Alameda Sundheim, named after one of the club's founders. Here you will find a sculpture commemorating the stadium on the aptly named Plaza del Velódromo. Hopefully, the politicians will sort out the future of the site of the old Estadio Colombino and celebrate the fantastic old stadium that stood in Isla Chica with an appropriate monument.
