Cerro del Espino

The Cerro del Espino sits inside the Ciudad Deportiva del Atlético de Madrid, and that address explains most of what happens there. Since 1997 it has served as the home ground of Atlético Madrid B, so the shirts running out onto the natural grass carry the same crest as the first team, even though the crowd rarely fills the seats. CF Rayo Majadahonda shares the tenancy, and it was their promotion to Segunda that forced the ground to grow up in a hurry.

That reconstruction, carried out in 2018, changed the place more than any anniversary would. The league's licensing rules for Segunda football demanded proper capacity and safety standards, so the roof came off the main stand to make room for a television gantry and VAR cameras, new dressing rooms went in on a single level, mobile stands were added to push numbers up, and the old perimeter fencing behind the goals came down. Rayo Majadahonda covered three-quarters of the roughly one-million-euro bill, with Atlético picking up the rest — a split that tells its own story about who actually needed the upgrade.

The ground opened in September 1995 on the site of an older pitch that had been cleared away the year before, and ownership has stayed with the Ayuntamiento de Majadahonda ever since. It has never chased a big night: no cup finals, no concerts, nothing beyond the routine business of reserve-team and second-tier football. When Rayo Majadahonda faced Atlético Madrid in the Copa del Rey in January 2022, the tie was big enough that it moved to the Wanda Metropolitano rather than staying home — a fair marker of what the Cerro del Espino is built for, and what it isn't.