Spain’s second division is the most geographically diverse league in western Europe. It doesn’t merely span two countries, but two continents, with teams based on three different land masses.
On Saturday, Andorra FC owner and former Barcelona player Gerard Pique was pictured helping shovel deep snow from the pitch so that his team could entertain Cultural Leonesa in the landlocked Pyrenean principality. Much further south, for a team to travel to Las Palmas in the Canary Islands usually takes three hours of flying.
The newest arrival to the league have added yet more diversity, since they’re located in Africa. AD Ceuta, based in the autonomous Spanish city of the same name, sits on the Strait of Gibraltar, bordered by Morocco to the south, the Mediterranean to the east and the Atlantic to the west.
Ceuta, which looks like any Spanish city of a similar size in the centre, is very different on the edge as it is surrounded by six metre-high double fences. Migrants, usually from other parts of Africa, wait by them to attempt to cross into the European community where they hope to claim asylum. When the migrants storm the fences, as has happened several times in recent years, it makes international news.
Ceuta, a slice of Spain in Africa, has rarely been associated with top-level sport. True, footballer Nayim, once of Barcelona, Tottenham Hotspur and Real Zaragoza is from there, as were two El Clasico legends: the 1960s Real Madrid star Pirri and the 1980s Barca defender Migueli.
Ceuta’s main football team, founded in 1956 after a merger, played in Spain’s second tier for 11 of their first 12 years before dropping for almost all their existence to the fourth and fifth levels. A fourth-tier team as recently as 2022, two promotions in four years have seen them rise back up to the second tier in 2025.
“The idea this season was for the team to stay up,” Nayim, who holds a position in charge of the club’s academy, told The National when we met him in the centre of Ceuta on Saturday afternoon, having travelled 90 minutes from Tangiers across a verdant northern Morocco.
“The ambition was to reach this level and it was crazy to even think that we got promoted last season, but we did. The celebrations were amazing and most of the players from last season are still playing at the higher level. There are two local players, too.”
Ceuta lost their opening three league games in keeping with their status as the favourites to go straight back down, but then went eight games unbeaten, defeating far bigger clubs including Real Zaragoza and Almeria.
Not only do Ceuta look like staying up, they sit eighth going into Sunday's game against Malaga, they are in contention for a play-off spot which could lead to an implausible rise to La Liga.
No team has a home record as strong as Ceuta’s which may be something to do with all the travel opponents have to undergo.
With no airport for planes, rivals can either take a ferry from the Spanish mainland or charter a flight into the nearby Moroccan city of Tetuan. If clubs don’t charter then it can be up to three flights each way for one game of football.
After speaking to Nayim, The National visited the 5,300 capacity Estadio Alfonso Murube just after Ceuta’s first team had left for the trip to Malaga, taking with them 1,600 travelling fans. That Ceuta are above Malaga and next week’s opponents Real Valladolid in the league is staggering.
At home, Ceuta play to a packed stadium for most games but it’s inconceivable that their small but perfectly formed home could stage La Liga football, and there’s hardly any room to expand it around the stadium which sits on a hill surrounded by apartments at the top of the town.
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Former player Nayim meets The National in Ceuta for an interview. Andy Mitten for The National -
Spanish signs on African soil in Ceuta. -
The beach at Ceuta. -
A view of AD Ceuta's home ground.
AD Ceuta have had to adapt along the way. As the team rose, the artificial surface which was well used in a community lacking space and football pitches, was replaced since teams in the highest levels of Spanish football must play on grass. Falcons are deployed to stop birds pecking up newly-sown seeds.
“When the new club president came, the club had an annual budget of €140,000 and the players were semi-professional in the Spanish fourth level,” explains Nayim, who will travel to Malaga (a ferry and then a 90-minute drive for their closest away game). The players were local guys. But the budget was increased and the people in power here love football, they really support the club. Now, the coach Jose Ramon is incredible, he’s from Seville and used to work a lot with the youth teams of Betis. He’s in his fourth season. We play really good football, too”.
Ceuta are well run and scout players effectively. Nigerian midfielder Christantus Uche came from Moralo in 2023, played a season with Ceuta and was sold to Getafe in 2024. In 2025, he was loaned to Premier League club Crystal Palace with an obligation to buy for £17 million. Ceuta sold him for €400,000 and will receive another €3m when Palace purchase him, since Ceuta have 12.5 per cent of the fee.
Such numbers go a long way in the Spanish second tier and are one reason why Ceuta have won promotions, a rise which was supposed to stop this season, but a graph of this term’s league placings is as steep as the mountains which surround their city.
