Lleida has a new football club, Lleida Calaveres CF, formed after the recent handover of the Camp d'Esports stadium keys to the city council. The project brings together supporters, season ticket holders and fans, with the aim of preserving the city’s football heritage through a historic name.

Announced last Friday, the club said it wants to be the emotional, social and identity heir to earlier sides including UE Lleida, Lleida Esportiu and Lleida CF. The move comes as the Lleida CF era ends, marked by Marc Torres, assistant to the presidency, handing over the stadium keys.

The name also reaches further back into Lleida’s football history. Before the Spanish Civil War, the city had two main teams, Lleida Sport Club and Calaveres. Founded in 1924 as Agrupació Esportiva Lleida Calaveres, the original club was linked to the Centre Autonomista de Dependents del Comerç i de la Indústria (CADCI), an organisation with a reformist and Catalan national identity.

Calaveres played at a pitch in Camp de Mart, near the Seu Vella. Its kit was black, with white collars and cuffs, and the shirt carried a skull and crossbones emblem that matched the club’s name, which translates as Skulls.

One of its best-known results came on 11 May 1935, when Calaveres beat Real Betis Balompié 2-1 during the city’s main festival. The source says Betis went on to win the league championship that same year.

After the Civil War, former players from Calaveres and Lleida Sport Club helped revive football in Lleida. On 20 October 1939, the regulations for the new Lérida Balompié AEM were sent to the Catalan Federation, marking the merger of the two entities. That club later became the basis for Unión Deportiva Lérida, renamed UE Lleida in 1978 after the transition period following Francisco Franco’s death. Historians have often treated Calaveres as a direct predecessor of the city club that followed, which helps explain the new project’s choice of name.

The story also connects with Antoni Creus Vila, known as Pacheco, a well-known figure in Camp d'Esports history. He played for Calaveres before the war and was one of the players involved in the win against Betis. He later fought in the Battle of the Ebro, where he was injured and ended his playing career. He then worked as the long-standing masseur for UD Lérida and UE Lleida from 1941 until his death in 1982. His memory is kept alive by a plaque on the stadium grandstand, a street in Balàfia and a commemorative tournament.