Espanyol Barcelona

Real Club Deportivo Espanyol de Barcelona, S.A.D. (in Catalan and officially: Reial Club Deportiu Espanyol de Barcelona, S.A.D.) is a Spanish football club based in Cornellà (Barcelona). Its origins date back to 1900 under the name Sociedad Española de Foot-Ball; it was officially established as a football club in Barcelona on 28 February 1909 after a restructuring of various sports clubs under the name Club Deportivo Español.

Since 1992, the date of the reform of the Sports Law, it has had the legal form of a sociedad anónima deportiva (sports limited company), whose majority shareholding since 2025 belongs to Velocity Sports Limited, the main shareholder also of Burnley Football Club.

Governed by the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) at the national level, it plays its home matches at the RCDE Stadium, which has a capacity of 37,776 spectators. It currently plays in the 2025-26 season of the top category of the Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional, the Campeonato de Liga de Primera División, in which it has competed for a total of 85 editions since its establishment in 1929. It has the honour of having been one of its first participants and its best result is a third place, achieved on four occasions, which places it seventh in its all-time table. It is one of the clubs that are champions of the Campeonato de España de Copa, winning it on four occasions and finishing runner-up on five others, and in both competitions two of its members had the honour of being the first scorers. At the regional level, it has won the Campionat de Catalunya eight times—one more than its predecessor, the Copa Macaya—the Copa Catalunya six times and the Supercopa de Catalunya in one edition. At the international level, under the auspices of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA)—the highest football body—its record shows two runner-up finishes in the UEFA Europa League—formerly the UEFA Cup—as its best result. By foundation and by the origin of the entity in 1900, it is the fifth oldest active club in the country.

Beginning as a football club, it soon acquired a multi-sport character, which led it to develop several disciplines that disappeared over the years. It is recognised as one of the sports entities with the most members in Spain (in the 2025-26 season it totals more than 37,000 members and more than 31,500 season-ticket holders). In the recent history of the entity there was speculation about the possibility of reviving some of them, such as the rugby section, which never materialised, unlike a women's football section, established in 1970 and called Real Club Deportivo Espanyol Femenino, which is one of the most successful in Spain. It competes in the Primera Federación, which it has won once, a title to which it adds six Copas de la Reina and five Copas de Catalunya, a record superior to that of the men's section. There is a sports society independent of the entity, called Seccions Deportives Espanyol, which was created in 2017 in honour of the club and in memory of the former sections. They play roller hockey, volleyball, basketball and handball.

Since 1991 it has had its own reserve team, Real Club Deportivo Espanyol "B", a function that since 1930 had been carried out by other societies independent of it through collaboration agreements. Despite the late founding of the second team, it had for decades had youth or training categories, reflected today in the sporting area of R.C.D. Espanyol and considered one of the best and most prolific youth academies in the country.