CF Gavá · History

CF Gavà is the football club of Gavà, a town in the Baix Llobregat area of Barcelona province, and has played in Segona Catalana, the Catalan regional league, since 2022. The team wears blue and claret shirts with blue shorts and plays at the Estadi Municipal La Bòbila, opened in 2002. Between 1995 and 2017 it spent nine seasons in Segunda División B, then the third tier of Spanish football, and it played 33 seasons in the Tercera División.

Founding and early decades

Sources disagree on the year the club was born. Its first documented match is dated 26 May 1921, when the side was still called Atlètic Gavà, while other references place the founding in 1922. In 1923 it dropped the prefix and began to appear in the press as Gavà FC. By 1924 it was playing at the Campo de la Roca, and it later moved to Las Colomeres. After the Spanish Civil War, the Franco authorities imposed the name CF Gavà along with white and green colours. The name stayed, but the club soon went back to the blue and claret it had worn from the start.

From regional football to the Tercera

Gavà made its Tercera División debut in 1956-57, finishing 19th. For decades it moved between that division and the Catalan regional leagues. The breakthrough came in the early 1990s: champions of the Regional Preferent in 1992-93 and of Primera Catalana in 1993-94, the club returned to the Tercera in 1994. A year later it won promotion to Segunda División B for the first time, and it finished seventh in its debut season, 1995-96.

The Segunda División B years

The first spell in the third tier lasted four seasons: seventh in 1995-96, 12th in 1996-97, sixth in 1997-98 and 20th in 1998-99, which sent the club back down. In the Catalan group of the Tercera it won the title in 2000-01 and finished runner-up in 2001-02, after which it went up again. In 2002 it reached the final of the Copa RFEF, which it lost, and in 2002-03 it was runner-up in the Copa Catalunya. The return to the third tier was short: a 17th-place finish in 2002-03 sent Gavà back to the Tercera.

The 2008 play-off

The club's best league finish came in 2007-08. Newly promoted from the Tercera, Gavà finished third in its Segunda B group and entered the play-offs for promotion to the Segunda División for the first time. In the first round it met SD Huesca: 2-2 at La Bòbila and 1-1 at El Alcoraz. Away goals sent the Aragonese side through, and Huesca went on to win promotion. Gavà stayed in the division for two more campaigns, tenth in 2008-09 and 19th in 2009-10, before dropping back to the Tercera.

Promotion in 2016 and administrative relegation

In 2015-16 Gavà finished runner-up in the Catalan group of the Tercera and came through three play-off rounds. In the last one, against CD Castellón, it drew 2-2 in Castellón and 2-2 at La Bòbila, and won promotion on penalties in June 2016. That season its striker Boris Garrós was the top scorer in the group. In 2016-17 the team finished tenth in Segunda B, but an institutional crisis under president Manuel Maniega ended in an administrative relegation, the first the club had suffered, and Gavà dropped to the Tercera. At the start of the 2017-18 season the members took back control of the club.

Primera and Segona Catalana

The 2017-18 Tercera campaign ended with the team 19th and relegated again, this time to Primera Catalana. There it finished 12th in 2018-19, sixth in 2019-20, fourth in 2020-21 and 14th in 2021-22, a position that took it down to Segona Catalana. Businessman Iván Carrillo later took over the running of the club and reached an agreement with EF Gavà to rebuild the youth system. In Segona Catalana Gavà finished eighth in 2022-23, fourth in 2023-24 and ninth in 2024-25.