Rodrigo Garcia |
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (EFE).- UD Las Palmas flies to the peninsula every two weeks. 1,750 kilometers to Madrid. And whatever airport you arrive at, your image is impeccable. A bus, as the bus is known in the Islands, carries the image of the club through the roads. With the motto, ‘La Unión hace Las Palmas’, it draws the attention of the public. How does a personalized bus jump to the peninsula every away game?
The strategy is outlined in the offices of UD Las Palmas. Patricio Viñayo, its general director, tells EFE how his club reached an agreement with an Asturian company to enjoy the services of a bus labeled with the team’s shield that travels throughout mainland Spain. From Monday to Friday, the bus company uses the bus for other activities. And as soon as García Pimienta’s team lands, they make themselves available to the Canarian team.
The feeling of belonging to certain colors is intrinsically linked to a shield, to an image that the clubs try to exploit to the maximum with income based on marketing.
Thus, for some time now it is common to see the teams arrive at the stadiums with the bus labeled with their emblem, their colors -what in the business world is called corporate color-, even with phrases taken from their own anthem, as a claim.
This pattern, so common in the last decade, is not so common when it comes to a team that, victim of the great inconvenience that insularity supposes, has to take a plane every two weeks to travel the approximately 1,750 kilometers that separate it from Madrid. .
The company Autocares Cabranes, from Asturias, is the mobility operator that the yellow team has trusted for their transfers, normally every two weeks, to the different playing fields.
The relationship between both companies dates back to the 2009-2010 season. Obviously, the vehicle would not be profitable if it were only dedicated to this activity, so the company in the Principality uses it for other types of services when it is not required by the football club.
The island entity had already had a bus in Gran Canaria for years, through the local company Las Palmas Bus, to carry out transfers within the island itself, even with equipment from its chain of subsidiaries, but the idea of having with a vehicle in the Peninsula it was launched -never better said- some years ago; and the current one is the fourth in which it has a personalized bus with the corporate image of UD Las Palmas labeled on its chassis.
As the club’s general director, Patricio Viñayo, explained to EFE, the preseason phase – during the month of July – is probably when his odometer works the most. And it is that the island teams, in search of competitive rivals in their preparation period, move to the Peninsula in summer to carry out part of their preparation.
The Gran Canaria club has chosen Marbella (Málaga) as its headquarters in recent years. In those ten or twelve days, the bus is one more element of the daily landscape, and its driver, one of the family.
Last Saturday, UD Las visited Cartagena, in the last game they had to play away from home in the regular season. The expedition traveled by charter flight to Murcia, and there, at the airport, their personalized bus awaited them, which will have traveled more than 800 kilometers from Asturias, without passengers.
And this Saturday, a week later, their chances of direct promotion to the First Division are at stake, receiving Alavés at home. A game for which, although playing at home, the bus they use on the island will be the protagonist, since the club established a route through Fondos de Segura so that they can receive the warmth of their people on a key day.
The wish of all the supporters of the Gran Canaria club, corroborated by Viñayo, is that it become the last service of the 2022-2023 academic year, which would mean not having to play four more games in the promotion promotion to achieve the desired goal. , but that will depend on the capricious ball, which also traces its particular curves.