Unionistas de Salamanca

Unionistas de Salamanca traces its birth to a funeral. On 18 June 2013, UD Salamanca — the city's historic club, founded in 1923 — was wound up over debts of €23 million. Ten weeks later, on 26 August, a group of its supporters, organised as the Platform of Unionista Fans, registered a new club rather than let the name disappear from Spanish football. They built it as a "club homenaje", a club of remembrance, run by an assembly of members on a one-vote-per-partner basis rather than by an owner. The crest still carries the inscription "In Memoriam UDS 1923-2013" and the motto "Ad astra per aspera".

That rivalry with the past follows the club into the present. Salamanca CF UDS, formed by investors who acquired the old club's assets and present themselves as its heirs, meets Unionistas in what locals call the Derbi Charro — a fixture that has spilled into court over who has the right to the city's football symbols.

On the pitch, promotion came fast. Jorge González Rojo, known as "Astu", took charge in 2014 and pushed the side up three divisions in as many years: the Salamanca provincial league in 2014/15, the Castile and León regional title the following season without a single defeat, and Tercera División in 2017/18, sealed with a play-off win over UD Socuéllamos that sent Unionistas into Segunda B. In 2024, the club won the regional phase of the Copa RFEF, beating Arandina CF 3-1 in the final to reach the competition's national stage. Raúl Cazañ and Oriol Riera, both former La Liga players, later returned to the club as coaches rather than footballers — Unionistas has never had the budget to sign a name, only to develop one.

Home is now the Estadio Municipal Reina Sofía, holding 4,895, reached in 2020 after years at the Pistas del Helmántico, a ground with room for barely 3,000. The shirt splits down the middle, black on the right, white on the left, and the away kit turns to purple and gold, a nod to the colours of the Salamanca sky above the stadium on matchday.