Ciudad Deportiva, Madrid

Ciudad Deportiva was Real Madrid's former training complex located on the Paseo de la Castellana in Madrid, Spain.

Completed under the presidency of Santiago Bernabéu Yeste in 1963, the Ciudad Deportiva was a novel concept at the time, located on the city's outskirts. It had training pitches for the first team and youth categories as well as facilities for club members, such as swimming pools and recreational rooms. At the time, Real Madrid also had sections devoted to other sports, such as tennis, and these athletes trained there as well.

The site also contained the Pabellón Raimundo Saporta, built in 1966, where Real Madrid's basketball team played its home games for 38 years. Some of Europe's greatest players, including Dražen Petrović and Arvydas Sabonis of later NBA fame, once called it home.

By the end of the 20th century the land surrounding the Ciudad Deportiva was no longer on the outskirts of Madrid, but had become a transportation hub with the north of the city and a financial area. Its location along the Castellana further increased the land's value. With Real Madrid's debts mounting in the late 1990s, plans to re-zone and commercially develop the land were mooted several times, but it wasn't until the presidency of Florentino Pérez that these plans came to fruition.

Although commonly believed to be a direct transaction in which Real Madrid sold the land to the Madrid city council, this is not in fact what happened. In 2000 there was a motion proposed, voted on, and approved in the Madrid parliament to re-zone the area of the Ciudad Deportiva, which until then was zoned for non-commercial purposes. In this vote, the Partido Popular (People's Party) and the Izquierda Unida (United Left) voted in favor, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) voting against.

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