Eldense

Elda is a shoemaking town in the province of Alicante.

The club was founded there on 17 September 1921. Its record is almost entirely a record of the third tier: 12 Tercera División titles , the first in 1955–56 and the last in 2013–14, with a run in the mid-1980s when Eldense won the division four seasons in a row. Before the Tercera settled into its modern shape, the club had taken the Primera Regional Murciana in 1941–42 and again the following year.

Winning the group was the easy part. The promotion play-offs that followed were where Eldense kept coming up short — beaten in the final round in 1954–55, then in three consecutive attempts from 1966–67, then again in 1983, 1984, 1985 and 1986. Four titles in the eighties, four times the tie slipped away.

The furthest the club ever went was earlier still: a semi-final of the Spanish championship in 1935–36.

In 2017 the head coach, Filippo Vito di Pierro, was arrested along with the general manager, Noble Capuani, in a match-fixing investigation. Eldense played on in the blue and red that gave them the nickname Deportivo Azulgranas, and came through a financial crisis in 2024.