Estadio Nueva España

Deportivo Español built this ground the way an immigrant club builds anything: modestly, and with an eye on the old country. It opened in February 1981 with a friendly against Deportivo La Coruña, a fixture that said plainly what the club was named for and who it expected to keep faith with it. There were no floodlights yet, and room for eighteen thousand.

The rebuild came in October 1996, timed to the club's fortieth anniversary, and it changed the ground more than its name — capacity nearly doubled, lights went up, and Estadio España became Estadio Nueva España. The gesture mattered more than the fixture list that followed.

What the stadium has lived through since says as much about Argentine football as any result on its pitch. When Deportivo Español went bankrupt in 2003, the club stopped playing there and had to find other grounds until 2007. In the gap, the stadium didn't sit empty — lower-division sides passed through, among them All Boys, Ferro Carril Oeste, Comunicaciones, San Miguel and Deportivo Muñiz, each borrowing a home that wasn't built for them.

The natural grass pitch and the address on Avenida Santiago de Compostela have stayed constant through all of it. So has the tenant: Deportivo Español came back to Nueva España when it could, and the ground has been theirs again since.