Pabellón de La Albericia

The arena sits between the swimming pools and the parking lot. The building is not much to look at from the street, but the interior fills out when the court is set for handball.

The parquet has been sanded and sealed more than once. The last time the work started, it stretched across the summer, and the new roof took its time to settle over the stands. The locker rooms were also touched up, and the ventilated walls were left to breathe.

The court is narrow for a football pitch, but the lines fit the game. The home side plays in red and white, and the visiting bench sits opposite the commentary box. The crowd fills the lower tier first, and the upper seats remain quiet until the second half.

The building has been here since the early nineties, though no one marks the date on the stone. It hosted a cup final in 1996, and the local handball club has played its home matches here ever since. The city council owns the roof, the floor, and the seats, and it pays for the upkeep.

The capacity is listed at two thousand four hundred, but the number changes when the city decides to open or close a section. During the pandemic the doors were half-shut, and the crowd was kept to three hundred. Now the seats are full again when the matches matter.

The playground outside has a different life. Children run across the grass while the adults watch the handball, and the two worlds do not interfere with each other. The stadium is not a monument; it is a place where the game is played on a Tuesday night and a Saturday afternoon.