Spal fans propose popular shareholding for the new sports club

And the fans of Spal ask to be able to participate in the life of society through a popular shareholding that allows them to elect a delegate: this should monitor from within what will happen in the new company that will be formed for the Excellence. In theory, the restart from an amateur championship can favor the attempt, because we are talking about infinitely lower sums than in professionalism: it is considered that with a million you can set up a squadron, and that even less is enough to win. In the past, a similar path has been attempted several times, and not to discourage the promoters of the initiative, but to use a euphemism, those impulses have not led to epochal successes. Moreover, times and forms change. In this case, the Coordination Center with some groups of the curve seems to promise itself almost more control functions than financial support, and as long as we are sailing in shallow waters it could even work. In times gone by, shareholding or the subscription of shares occurred mostly with the aim of actively contributing to the fate of the club. And it was always the prerogative of the rich and notables for obvious reasons of wallet.

Roberto Zaramella has collected these finds and there are fabulous "gems". The oldest document dates back to 1919, and tells of the subscription of 300 lire, a considerable sum for those times, useful for the construction of the first sports field of Spal that would have arisen in those days behind the current "Paolo Mazza", in Piazza d'Armi, in the area of ​​the current gardens of the former mutual. Spal was born as a multi-sports club to which in the very first years hundreds of subscribers contributed who became members, and it was fascism that drastically reduced the number with the imposition of higher minimum fees, in order to prevent excessive surveillance and better appropriate that great vehicle of propaganda. In the early twenties, they quickly got to asking for a participation to build the current stadium, and here we also get to the thousand lire of the baron Camerini Scola.

In this case there was an additional guarantee: if the stadium project did not come to fruition, the sum would be returned, which did not happen. The regime did not hesitate to ask for funds from the wealthiest people of Ferrara even in 1939, when the club, in financial difficulty, also changed its name, becoming the more autarchic Ac Ferrara. "It was even the secretary of the Fascio of Ferrara, Lino Balbo, nephew of Italo – explains Zaramella – who personally went to the trouble of asking for money on Party headed paper. In exchange, tickets and season tickets to the sports field were donated". It was a different matter in the post-war period, when in 1946 they wanted to give a more solid life to the club that had just risen from the ashes of the war. Here they asked for a "premium loan" repayable in three years and without interest, always with the entrance cards to the matches as a substitute prize for the lost fruits. The company's assets and the players' capital were put up as collateral for the loan. Without boring you with other unsuccessful attempts, it is worth remembering the last real popular shareholding promoted by Donigaglia in the Nineties. Launched in an unforgettable meeting held in the then Embassy cinema in Porta Po, shares were issued for one hundred thousand lire each, and to set an example to the people, the first subscribers were the politicians present. More than money, a drop in the ocean Builders of those days, Donigaglia almost raised a question of trust after a couple of seasons of burning defeats. There are therefore many purposes and forms that popular participation in Spal can take. This one is unique for one reason above all: it is being studied at a time when a Spal registered in a championship does not even exist. Soon it will exist, with the hope of not finding two of them…

Mauro Malaguti