Caserio Ciudad Real

The Quijote Arena sits in Ciudad Real. The ground carries the name of the city's most famous fictional son, and the nickname stuck to the team that plays there, Los Quisquillosos, nods to the same source — a small joke the "Grada Amarilla", the yellow-shirted stand behind one goal, has learned to live with.

That team is not the one that made Ciudad Real a word handball people outside Spain knew. The original BM Ciudad Real won three European titles between 2006 and 2009, five Spanish league championships and three Copa del Rey trophies, built around players such as Uroš Zorman, before the club was absorbed into Atlético Madrid's structure in 2008 and, once Atlético's project folded in 2013, ceased to exist in the city at all. The supporters who had followed it did not wait for the dissolution. On 27 July 2011, while the old club was already playing as Atlético's handball side elsewhere, they founded Caserío Ciudad Real to keep the sport alive at home, starting again in the lower divisions with none of the old club's honours to carry over.

The climb back has been slow and, until recently, regional. Caserío reached División de Honor Plata in 2022, then went further than any second-tier side had gone in the Copa del Rey by reaching the quarter-finals in 2023–24. Promotion to Liga ASOBAL finally came in 2025, secured through the playoffs, with Santi Urdiales — who played for the club before its collapse — now coaching the side back into the competition his old team once dominated. The rivalry that matters to Caserío now runs closer to home, against Guadalajara and Cuenca in the regional derby, not against the club in Madrid that carries a piece of its history. What the city has not seen again, not yet, is a trophy with its own name on it.