Pulido Bakery: from baking bread to playing against Real Sociedad

The case of Soccer Club Panadería Pulido San Mateo it is atypical, singular. It is not usual for a team to have been known from its inception by the name of its sponsor, and not by the locality it represents. And much less, that the name of that establishment appears on the shield. The reason is simple: the bakery founded the club and, therefore, it gives name to the sports entity.

The ‘Pulido’, as it has always been known in the regional football field, is a modest football team from the Vega de San Mateo, a town with 7,500 inhabitants in the center of Gran Canaria, founded 28 years ago by a group of friends, including the owner of Panadería Pulido, an establishment in this sector consolidated on the island and which is now in its fourth generation.

Since its inception, the team has always been competing in regional football and, after only five seasons in the Canarian Third Division group, in June 2021 it managed to make the historic leap to the second RFEF, a newly created category, the fourth in the new order of Spanish football.

Club de Fútbol Panadería Pulido San Mateo. Photo: EFE

After that feat, the club is once again topical because the draw for the Copa del Rey has brought him a historic confrontation against a First Division rival, and not just any one: the Real society. An award for some players who after almost three months (12 days) occupy the penultimate position in the classification of their group (IV) with only seven points, three of which have been obtained this past weekend with their first league victory defeating by 1-2 al Antaquera, with a goal in the 90th minute.

With a modest field (Municipal Vega de San Mateo) with capacity for 650 spectators, the club has been forced to move the cup match next, Wednesday, December 1st al Gran Canaria stadium, with a capacity four times greater than the entire population of San Mateo.

Pulido Bakery would have “loved” to play the one-game tie against the txuri-urdin in their field, but the modest facility does not meet the requirements for a sporting event of this magnitude.

“Knowing the name of the rival makes your hair stand on end and the emotion invades you. It is as if we had won the lottery, something unthinkable,” he acknowledges Christ Rodriguez, Managing Director of Panadería Pulido.

Club de Fútbol Panadería Pulido San Mateo. Photo: EFE

Rodríguez explains that the bakery was born in 1923 “as a hobby”, promoted by his great-grandparents, at a time with a shortage of raw materials, but the acceptance of the public ended up turning it into a trade. And so, from those first deliveries that were made on a donkey, until today, almost a century later.

And later on, the idea of ​​forming a soccer team came up. “The main foundation was that the boys of the municipality could practice sports. There was not even a soccer field, it had to be done,” adds Rodríguez.

The managing director of Panadería Pulido details that from the beginning they have always been “there, as a parallel entity, as the soul of the club that has always been part of day-to-day decision-making, but above all to try to extrapolate to the team the values ​​of our company: humility, sacrifice and work “.

Club de Fútbol Panadería Pulido San Mateo. Photo: EFE

Today, the sports entity has a football school and, at the base, teams of the youngest, juvenile, infantile, cadet and youth category. This year, in addition, a Second Regional team has been created to supply players to the Second RFEF. With a budget of just over half a million euros, it is one of the most humble clubs in the category.