César Robledo has work to do, but wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s a bit before seven o’clock on Saturday evening and the big yellow bus he drives has just rolled into the Vall d’en Bas hotel in the Catalan countryside. His passengers, footballers for Union Deportiva Las Palmas, have got off, leaving him to clear up. The picnics, individually prepared in paper bags with squad numbers penciled on, have been polished off. A few beers have been too: Pio Pio, the club’s own brew.
“I prefer to arrive and spend an hour, even two, tidying than go to my room,” Robledo says. “Because that means they’ve won, and they’re happy.”
Happy? They’re delighted, a party breaking out on board and rightly so: the passengers have just become the first team this season to beat Barcelona away, winning 2-1 at Montjuic. Vicente Gomez, the Las Palmas-born former midfielder who now works in the sporting directorate, is waiting for the players.
“You don’t know what you’ve done,” he tells them. What they’ve done is make history. This is their first win at Barcelona in 53 years. Bottom two months ago, it’s also their fourth win in six. They’ve come a long way.
Quite literally.
When Las Palmas land in Barcelona, the guagua is waiting outside the Terminal.
Hang on … the guagua? How did it get there?
The answer, of course, is: it didn’t. Las Palmas have two buses: one on the island, driven by Vicente; another on the mainland, driven by César Robledo. They look the same outside, but that one is basic inside while this is LaLiga’s best because it has to be. A year old, worth €600,000, it is based in Gijon, northern Spain, although today Robledo has come from a depot in Logrono.
An encyclopedia of rest stops and roadsides, most of his miles are covered alone, an iPod Classic plugged in. Once he picks up the team, Manolo, the director of security, sits alongside him. “The navigator,” Robledo says; “more like the guy telling him to slow down,” Manolo says. Midfielder Alberto Moleiro likes to sit down in the front sometimes, too.
Loaded up at last, the bus reaches the Grand Marina hotel at 9:05 p.m. Straight to dinner on the eighth floor and then one last sleep.
Match day morning and Doki is first in as always with Cinthya, the physio, distributing supplements and pills before breakfast, neatly laid out in little plastic packets. There’s one long table for players and two small, circular ones for staff, but they’re not full. It’s an early kickoff and there’s brunch at 10:45 a.m., so few come at 9.30 a.m.
There’s activation on the second floor at 10:30 a.m. and a team meeting at 11:40 a.m. in the Barcino room, final instructions on beating Barcelona. Then it’s downstairs for noon. A dozen fans wait, some with gifts. Police outriders rev and Robledo pulls out at 12:20 p.m., up the hill to Montjuic. Two mini busses follow. It takes 10 minutes. Kickoff is at 2 p.m.
At 4:03 p.m., history is made.
The journey’s not over, but on days like this it all feels worth it. The guagua waits outside the Olympic stadium, beers on board.
