Peña Athletic California: A passion which knows no boundaries

“It all started when Athletic Club visited Boise, Idaho, to play a friendly last summer,” Ryan Maquiñana, president of Peña Athletic California, told www.laliga.es. “We flew up there and were surprised at the size of the Basque community in the States. After that trip, we decided to try and start something back home. We worked seriously to build it all up from January and we now have more than 10,000 followers across all our social media platforms on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. We have around 50 registered members.”

The peña was officially recognised early this season in a ceremony at San Mames, and represents fans across a wide stretch of the west coast. “A third of the members live in the Bay Area of San Francisco, a third in Bakersfield (Southern California), and the rest are spread far and wide," Maquiñana said. "We even have one member who lives in Shanghai but follows everything we do. That’s the power of the internet. It’s a passion which knows no boundaries. People feed off that passion and it helps bring them together.”

 

This bubbling enthusiasm from over 9,000 kilometres away begs the question, why Athletic? “My mother was raised in the Basque Country, in Durango, and her father, my grandfather, was a ‘socio’ at Athletic Club,” Maquiñana explains. “It’s something in my blood. I have been to see them play on trips back to Spain to visit family and friends.”

Athletic Club lie seventh in LaLiga Santander only two points short of the top four after the weekend win over Villarreal CF. “With Athletic it’s always a work in progress,” he added. “We’ve made good progress under Ernesto Valverde and now we’d like to see them sneak into the UEFA Champions League, but it’s tough. There are a lot of good teams in LaLiga. Aritz Aduriz is having another big year and we have young talents coming through such as Iñaki Williams and Aymeric Laporte. We remain optimistic!”