Instalaciones de Zubieta

Zubieta is not the San Sebastián arena visitors know. The pitch replaces the old Campo José Luis Orbegozo, which stood on the same patch of ground and held barely half as many people. The surface is natural grass, kept to the same standard as the rest of the Zubieta complex, which has long been treated as one of the more serious youth-development sites in Spanish football. The stadium carries no sponsor name, despite the informal tag Zubieta XXI attached to it by some in the local press — an indication of how little the club has bothered marketing what is, in effect, still a training-ground pitch with stands bolted on.

What Zubieta lacks in scale it makes up in proximity: this is as close as a supporter gets to watching the pipeline that has produced La Real's recent first-team squads, one level removed from the noise of the main stadium.