Real Oviedo

Location

Oviedo, Spain, Spain

Capacity

30,500

Opened

2000

Time zone

UTC +01:00 Central European Time (CET)

Estadio Municipal Carlos Tartiere is a multi-use stadium in Oviedo, Spain. With a capacity of 30,500 seats, it is the 17th-largest stadium in Spain and the largest in Asturias. The new Carlos Tartiere replaced a former stadium (built in 1932) of the same name of the club's first president Carlos Tartiere as the home venue of Real Oviedo. The stadium has held three games of the Spain national football team (the city has held seven in total), one game of the Spain national under-21 team and another one of the Asturian autonomous team. History The first stone of the construction was placed on 18 June 1998 and the first match played in this stadium took place on September 17, 2000, a Primera División match between Real Oviedo and Las Palmas. The stadium was officially opened on September 20, 2000, with a friendly match between Real Oviedo and FK Partizan. The new stadium has been criticised by a number of different sources, especially about its location, which does not have adequate access and emergency exits for large attendances. Furthermore, the pitch is hard to maintain, due to its moist environment and lack of sunlight, especially during the winter. In addition, the large openings in the facade, which make it a cold stadium, are also subject to criticism, as well as its lack of color, with predominance of gray both inside, in the seating area, and outside, by the uncovered facade of concrete. Despite this, Emilio Llano, one of the architects of the stadium, has defended the stadium and claimed that "the problem could be in the grass and not in the subsoil". The first sold-out match was on 28 October 2001, in the first Asturian derby in the new stadium. Sporting de Gijón won that game by a score of 0–2. On 24 May 2009, Real Oviedo beat the attendance record in a Tercera División game with 27,214 spectators. It was in the first leg of the 2009 Group Winners play-off against RCD Mallorca B, and the blues won 1–0.