El Toralín · Profile

Estadio El Toralín opened on 5 September 2000 with a friendly between Sociedad Deportiva Ponferradina and Celta de Vigo, won 2-0 by the Galician side. It is the municipal ground of Ponferrada, in the province of León, owned by the city council and located on Calle José Luis Sáez. The stadium takes its name from the area on which it was built. Since that summer it has been Ponferradina’s home, replacing the Estadio de Fuentesnuevas.

From Santa Marta to Fuentesnuevas

Ponferradina spent its early decades at the Santa Marta ground. In 1975 the club moved to the Estadio de Fuentesnuevas, which served as its home for twenty-five seasons. In the late 1990s the city decided to give the club, then playing in the Spanish third tier, Segunda División B, a new venue. The project was designed by the architecture practice ar3, and construction cost around 500 million pesetas, roughly three million euros.

The 2000 opening

After the Celta friendly, the first competitive match came on the third matchday of the 2000-01 Segunda División B season: a 1-0 home win over Real Oviedo’s reserve side. The ground opened with 6,123 seats and a natural grass pitch measuring 105 by 68 metres. Next to the stadium sit the El Toralín annex pitches, which complete the sports complex.

Expansions driven by promotion

Ponferradina’s first promotion to the Spanish second division, in 2006, forced an expansion of the stands. Capacity rose from 6,123 to 8,432, the figure that has been listed as the stadium’s official capacity ever since. The team went up to the second tier again in 2010 and in 2012. That second spell was the longest: four consecutive seasons in Segunda División between 2012 and 2016, with two seventh-place finishes, in 2012-13 and 2014-15, the club’s best results in the division.

Real Madrid’s Copa visit in 2011

On 13 December 2011 El Toralín hosted Real Madrid in the first leg of the Copa del Rey round of 32. Temporary stands were installed for the occasion, raising capacity to around 8,800, the largest the ground has held. The holders won 2-0 with goals from José Callejón and Cristiano Ronaldo, one in each half. A week later Madrid completed the tie with a 5-1 win at the Santiago Bernabéu.

Spain’s under-21 side

The stadium has staged four competitive matches of the Spain under-21 team, all of them qualifiers for the UEFA European Under-21 Championship and all of them Spanish wins. The first was played on 1 June 2001, a 5-1 victory over Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was followed by a 3-0 win against Poland on 16 November 2007 and a 3-1 win against Liechtenstein on 2 March 2010. The fourth came on 27 March 2018, a 3-1 victory over Estonia.

The 2019 promotion and the renovation

On the night of 29 June 2019 a full house of 8,432 spectators watched the second leg of the promotion play-off final against Hércules. Ponferradina had won 3-1 at the Rico Pérez in Alicante and won again at home, 1-0, for a 4-1 aggregate. That summer the stadium underwent its most extensive renovation: a VAR area, a broadcast booth and two VIP boxes were added, pitchside advertising was standardised in blue and white, and the playing field was narrowed by two metres. The team spent four seasons in the second division, from 2019-20 to 2022-23, and in 2023 was relegated to Primera Federación, the Spanish third tier, making its debut in that division in the 2023-24 season.