Deportivo Alavés Deportivo Alavés, based in Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital of the Basque Country, was founded in 1920 as Sport Friends Club, before adopting its current name a year later, on 23 January 1921 — the date now regarded as the club's official founding. The team is known by several nicknames: El Glorioso ("The Glorious One"), Babazorros, and Los Albiazules ("The Blue-and-Whites").
Alavés wrote its name into Spanish football history as early as 1930, becoming the first club ever to win promotion from the newly established Segunda División to La Liga, having won the second tier's inaugural season. For much of the 20th century, however, the club shuttled between the lower divisions, and its real breakthrough did not come until the turn of the millennium. In the 2000–01 season, Alavés — playing in European competition for the very first time — advanced through round after round of the UEFA Cup, beating Inter Milan along the way and thrashing Kaiserslautern 9–1 on aggregate in the semi-finals, before reaching the final in Dortmund. There, in one of the most dramatic finals in European club football history, Alavés lost 4–5 to Liverpool, decided by a golden goal in the final minutes of extra time.
The club's second great moment came in the 2016–17 season, when Alavés, newly promoted back to La Liga, reached the final of the Copa del Rey for the first time in its history, losing 1–3 to FC Barcelona. Despite these two remarkable runs on the domestic and European stage, the club has never won a major trophy.
The team plays its home matches at the modest, traditional Mendizorrotza stadium, opened in 1924 and among the oldest venues still in use in Spanish top-flight football. After years spent as low as the third tier of Spanish football around the turn of the 2010s, Alavés returned to La Liga in 2016 and has remained a fixture of the top division ever since, standing today as one of the symbols of grit and sporting resilience in the Basque Country.