Real Oviedo remain grateful to Real Madrid, Florentino Pérez and José Ángel Sánchez as the clubs prepare to meet in La Liga for the first time since 2001.

Relegated from Spain’s top flight 24 years ago, Oviedo are back in La Liga this season and welcome Madrid to their humble Estadio Carlos Tartiere on matchday two of 2025–26.

In 2012, when Oviedo were struggling to survive in tier three, Madrid helped out financially as part of national and international efforts to get one of Spain’s historic clubs through it.

Madrid visited Oviedo for a preseason match that summer—winning 5–1—and allowed the hosts to keep all proceeds, apart from their travel costs to get there. A few months later, another €100,000 ($117,225) followed after a barbecue at Sánchez’s home.

“It was a gesture from a real club,” Toni Fidalgo, who was Oviedo president when the preseason game was arranged, told AS.

“I will always be grateful to Florentino for the gestures he made to us in 2012.

Florentino Pérez
Florentino Pérez was willing to help financially. | Borja B. Hojas/Getty Images

“In preseason, we had serious problems putting the team together. We needed money. So we asked Real Madrid for a friendly. I called [general manager] José Ángel Sánchez, who is Real Madrid’s midfielder: the entire [operation] goes through him.

“He gave me the go-ahead but said we'd have to see how we would divide the takings. The next day, he told me that everything would be ours; that we just had to pay for the plane ticket.”

Jorge Menéndez Vallina soon succeeded Fidalgo as president and also maintained a close relationship with Real Madrid and Sánchez. Vallina was the BBQ guest who raised the issue again, and the money followed, by way of a donation to the Oviedo city council, two days later.

Overall, Oviedo managed to raise the required €2 million by November 2012 to stay in business, while Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, estimated by Forbes to be the richest person in the world at the time, then invested another €2.5 million.

It not only kept Oviedo alive, but sparked the club’s steady revival. Having been a La Liga team for substantial spells across the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and unbroken from 1988 to 2001, they returned to Spain’s Segunda División in 2015, and made the step back to La Liga a decade later.


READ THE LATEST LA LIGA NEWS, TRANSFER RUMORS AND GOSSIP


This article was originally published on www.si.com as ‘I Will Always Be Grateful’—How Real Madrid Helped Save Real Oviedo From Extinction.