What’s in a nickname? That is a question The Athletic will be answering this week, as we trace the origins of football clubs’ monikers in England, Germany, Italy, France, Spain and the rest of the world.
Here, we take a deep dive into Spanish clubs…
Bronze-age cave painters. Roman emperors. Early Christian martyrs. Latin American revolutionaries. Seminal British 1960s pop-rock bands. Avante-garde 1970s Hollywood filmmakers. Humble suppliers of fruits and vegetables. Spain truly is a country of many cultures, languages, influences and traditions, as showcased by the spectacular variety and creativity of the backstories to the nicknames of today’s La Liga clubs.
But we start with Catalan backsides.
Between 1909 and 1922, Barcelona’s home stadium was L’Escopidora, which was extended over the years as on-field success attracted more fans to watch the club’s first superstars in forward Paulino Alcantara, midfielder Josep Samitier and goalkeeper Ricardo Zamora.
A new super-modern, two-tier stand to hold 6,000 supporters went up in 1916, along the side of the pitch running along the Carrer de la Industria street (today called Carrer de Paris). Passers-by looking up would see a long row of bums seated along the wall at the very top of the stand.
So locals started to call Barca fans ‘culers’ or ‘cules’ — meaning ‘those showing their backsides’. While some used the term ‘blaugrana’ after the Catalan words for the blue and dark red colours on the team’s jerseys, ‘cules’ was more commonly preferred, even after Barca moved to a bigger Les Corts stadium in 1922, and then the Camp Nou (currently being extensively redeveloped to have room for almost 100,000 bums on more comfortable seats). And it lives on today — many supporters self-identify as cules on social media while the club’s official online fan community is called ‘culers’.
(Joaquin Corchero / Europa Press Sports via Getty Images)
Real Madrid’s most commonly used nickname is the more straightforward ‘Los Blancos’ or ‘Los Merengues’ (the meringues): both pretty obvious nods to the team’s gleaming white shirts. The allusion to the originally French dessert of whipped cream and egg whites was supposedly first made by Matias Prats Canete, the pre-eminent Spanish radio and TV commentator during the club’s golden era in the 1950s and 1960s.
Madrid can also be called ‘Los Vikingos’ (‘the Vikings’), a nickname with a more debated history. Some say that it originated when Madrid beat Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3 in the 1960 European Cup final and UK newspaper The Times’ match report began with the line ‘Real wanders through Europe as the Vikings once walked, destroying everything in its path’.
Others argue it was Atletico Madrid fans who started calling their neighbours ‘Los Vikingos’ in the 1970s, when Real had several tall and blonde German and Danish players: Gunter Netzer, Paul Breitner, Henning Jensen and Uli Stielike.
Around that time, Atletico’s crosstown rivals started to call them ‘Los Indios’ (the Indians), during a period when their squad featured various South American players including Argentines Ruben Ayala and Ruben ‘Panadero’ Diaz, and Brazilians Luis Pereira and Leivinha.
A Real Madrid fan wears a Viking-inspired helmet at the 2016 Champions League final (Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images)
Many within both clubs’ fanbases do not feel represented by these terms yet some of Madrid’s more hardcore ultras have embraced the Vikings name as part of a far-right political ideology. Atletico’s club mascot is still called ‘Indi’ — it’s a raccoon with a supposedly native American headdress in Atletico’s red and white colours.
Some Atletico fans prefer the nickname ‘Los Colchoneros’: the ‘mattress makers’. This term was first used by opposition fans to taunt a team wearing red and white stripes, recalling the inexpensive material often used to cover mattresses in mid-20th century Spain. The name stuck at a club which has always had a certain make-do-and-mend mentality, although most official communication these days uses the term ‘Rojiblanco’: red and white.
That is a reminder that Atletico began life as a branch of another ‘Rojiblanco’ club — Athletic Bilbao. The Basque side also have another nickname, ‘Los Leones’ (the lions), a reference to San Mames, patron saint of the area of Bilbao where their stadium stands.
Mames was born a long way from Bilbao in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) during the third century, when the relatively new religion of Christianity was being persecuted within the Roman Empire. Legend has it that, while still a young child, he was thrown to the lions, only for an angel to miraculously appear and help him tame one of the wild beasts (although he was later martyred at the age of just 15).
There is a lion in Athletic’s stadium museum today — the animal was gifted (alive) to the club by fellow Basque side Alaves’ then president Juan Arregi, as a reward for their 1984 La Liga and Copa del Rey double win. When the lion passed away a few years later, it was freeze-dried to put on display.
San Mames Stadium – sometimes something of a lion’s den (Francis Gonzalez/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Valencia are nicknamed ‘Los Che’, with ‘Che’ being a colloquial greeting traditionally used on Spain’s eastern coast, roughly equivalent to ‘mate’ or ‘buddy’. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, immigrants brought the expression to the Americas, where their descendants continued to use it, including Argentina-born Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, who got his nickname from amused Cuban comrades.
Real Valladolid are sometimes known as ‘Los Pucelanos’, an old name for that city, for which there are various origin stories. One dates from when residents went to France in the 14th century to fight alongside Joan of Arc (the ‘Maid of Orleans’ in English, and ‘Pucelle d’Orleans’ in French).
Alaves are also called ‘Los Babazorros’, which comes from a medieval Spanish word meaning an inexperienced youngster who dares to achieve more than he at first appears capable of, often used to describe the people from the club’s home city of Vitoria, capital of the Basque province of Alava. The team are also known as ‘El Glorioso’ (The Glorious), as the club anthem begins with the words ‘Glorious team of Alava’.
Espanyol fans have long been called ‘Los Periquitos’ due to the fugitive parakeets which lived in the trees around the Estadio de Sarria, the team’s home stadium in Barcelona from 1923 to 1997. Meanwhile, Las Palmas are known as ‘El Pio-Pio’, the noise made by the bird which gave their Canary Islands home their name. Leganes’ nickname is ‘Los Pepineros’ — the cucumber growers — as the surrounding area supplied the nearby city of Madrid with fresh fruit and vegetables for centuries.
Leganes’ SuperPepino, world sport’s most famous cucumber-shaped mascot (Thomas Lovelock/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
Other La Liga clubs are generally just referred to by the colour of their kits, although the terms used show local pride in the different languages and cultures of Spain’s many regions. Real Sociedad are known as ‘Los Txuri-urdin’, fusing the Basque terms for the ‘blue’ (txuri) and ‘white’ (urdin) from the team’s home jerseys.
Real Mallorca are ‘Los Bermellones’. ‘Vermello’ is red in Catalan, an official language there on the Balearic Islands. Girona are ‘Les Blanc-i-vermells’ from the white and red colours of that Catalan city’s coat of arms and Celta Vigo are called ‘Os Celestes’ — ‘the sky blues’ in Galician.
Osasuna are ‘Los Rojillos’ – ‘The Reds’, from the colour of the flag of the province of Navarre. Getafe, meanwhile, are ‘Los Azulones’, which means ‘The Blues’ in Castilian Spanish. Rayo Vallecano are ‘Los Franjirrojos’ (The Red Sashes) — from the red diagonal stripe on their otherwise white jerseys.
Sevilla are another ‘Rojiblanco’ team, also sometimes known as ‘Los Nervioneses’, as they play in the Nervion neighbourhood of the Andalusian capital. City neighbours Real Betis are ‘Los Verdiblancos’ (the green and whites), or ‘Los Beticos’, with Baetica being the name of the Roman province of Andalusia two millennia back.
Villarreal’s ‘Yellow Submarine’ nickname dates from much closer to the modern day. During the 1960s, fans adapted the lyrics of the famous song by The Beatles into a chant supporting a team also known locally as ‘Los Groguets’, or ‘The Yellows’ in the language of the Valencian region where Villarreal is situated.
(Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
Entering Spain’s Segunda Division second tier, Almeria are ‘Los Indalos’ from a figure painted in prehistoric rock art on the walls of ‘Los Letreros’ cave within the local Andalusian province. Real Zaragoza are ‘Los Manos’, a nickname for all citizens of the Aragonese capital, which may come from the Latin word ‘Magnus’ (large). Granada are often known as ‘Los Nazaris’, from the Muslim Nasrid dynasty which ruled the Emirate of Granada from 1232 to 1492. Real Oviedo are ‘Los Carbayones’ from the huge oak (‘carbayon’ in old Asturian) which is the symbol of their home city.
Tenerife are ‘Los Chicharreros’ as inhabitants of their home city of Santa Cruz often ate ‘chicharros’: mackerel caught in the Atlantic Ocean that surrounds the Canary Islands. For similar reasons, Malaga are often known as ‘Los Boquerones’, a term derived from the sardines provided by the Mediterranean Sea.
Mirandes are called ‘Los Jabatos’, a name taken from the wild boars native to the woods around the club’s home city of Miranda de Ebro. Alcorcon are ‘Los Alfareros’, or ‘The Potters’, as the city to the south of Madrid once supplied earthenware to many of Europe’s royal families. Elsewhere, Eibar are ‘Los Armeros’ due to the Basque town’s history of armaments manufacturing.
The most quixotic of all the nicknames on the list is Albacete‘s ‘El Queso Mecanico’ — the mechanical cheese. ‘Queso-manchego’ is the cheese of the city’s Castilla-La Mancha province. The twist to ‘mecanico’ came as a 1980s Albacete side played a ‘total football’ style similar to the Netherlands’ national team of the previous decade, who themselves were nicknamed ‘Clockwork Orange’ after Stanley Kubrick’s spectacular 1971 film version of Anthony Burgess’s dystopian novel.
Not always easy to explain, and not always possible to fully defend, the origins of La Liga club’s nicknames nevertheless provide an interesting window into Spanish football culture, with all its colours and inspirations.
(Top photo design: Eamonn Dalton)
