Esports Valencia: Local DreamHack and Fortnite School

¡HOLA AMIGOS! My name is Dasha, I am 18 years old, I have been living in Spain for the fifth year already. I have a small hobby – video games. More specifically, these are Counter-Strike, Mortal Kombat, and quite a bit of Dota. My hobby started from childhood, when I was just running a little after Crash Bandicoot on my favorite PlayStation, when I froze and destroyed my rivals for Sab Zero.

With the advent of the computer, she discovered a series of NFS and CS games. At that time, the first Counter-Strike series for me was Source. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I did not find 1.6, or simply did not want to play it.

I admit, while playing CS: GO, I never played tournaments, I did not attend eSports events. Living far abroad from the CIS, primarily for myself, I wanted to reveal the topic of e-sports in Spain. This summer, the next international DreamHack Valencia event took place here.

If you just say that the hype was, then say nothing. The hype around the tournament was no worse than for some football match or another bullfight. Advertisements at every turn, banners on the walls, videos in advertisements on TV and on the Internet, a tram with a coloring of the upcoming event, which was cut through the streets of the city last month, recalling recent events.

The city has a well-known local football club “Valencia”. In 2016, its representatives opened an e-sports division. Having studied the pages of the organization’s websites and social networks, I found contacts of the General Director of Valencia Esports. I contacted him, I wanted to talk about e-sports and ask some interesting questions.

Unfortunately, he “fed” me breakfast for a week, and at some point he simply started ignoring me. The behavior is inherent in the Spaniards, so I was not a bit surprised and had to look for information myself. Then from social networks it was possible to find out that Valencia Esports has FIFA and Teamfight Tactics players, a Fortnite streamer. Not a lot, although a couple of years ago they owned a League of Legends team.

By the way, the same Evangelion, which was signed as one of the LoL players back in 2016, has been representing Teamfight Tactics discipline since September this year.

I can only associate such a meager selection of e-sportsmen with the fact that the city lacks some local amateur tournaments or competition among organizations involved in e-sports, but I managed to find, at first glance, an e-sports school called ELEVAT Pro.

Googling about her, I found their official website and real address. The message on social networks has not yet been read, it has already become a classic and I was not even surprised. Their latest updates on social networks are dated mid-September. I had to go to the address.

The school is located in one of the small streets of the city center. It looks like an unremarkable entrance, ordinary residential buildings with food facilities, which occupied almost all the free space on the first floor.

As I later learned, since the beginning of autumn their office is undergoing major repairs. Nevertheless, I managed to get in touch with the general manager of the organization, Hector Alemani, and talk a little about their activities. He refused a personal meeting, citing great employment, but the CEO agreed to answer my questions in the messenger.

Our company is engaged in the development of the young generation, helps to strive for victories and work in a team. At the moment, we focus only on Fortnite. The age at which we begin to recruit groups begins at 6 years old. Classes are held on a commercial basis, but almost any family can afford them (from two thousand rubles).
We also conduct birthday parties, holding tournaments between guests, various quizzes on the topic of games and more. I think that at this stage we are only at the first stage of the development of e-sports in Spain, but we are glad that we are part of this large campaign. In the future, of course, for us to grow cybersportsmen from our students. So that large teams, like our local one, Valencia Esports, would like to sign a contract with our student.

The tariffs for their services, as Ector said, are reasonable: they spend their birthdays starting from 50 euros, for 20 euros your child can go to school once a week for a month, train his abilities, for 30 euros 2 times a week for a month. Recommended ages from 6 to 15 years.

From this short conversation it becomes clear that the school has a very minimal attitude to e-sports, and more about entertainment and its own business. Despite this, previously students of different ages actively went to school. They have fun, play, have fun and even arrange competitions among themselves.

A city on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea can hardly boast of well-known e-sports organizations or promising players. Esports are not as interesting for children as traditional sports – football or basketball. In Spain, guys have more ambitions to grow up as a professional footballer with a huge salary than an esports player with a very vague future.

As an example, I can give my classmates from two different schools – absolutely no one talks about e-sports or games in particular, which distinguishes them from children in the CIS. If we talk about e-sports, as a pleasant pastime, then there are a lot of analogues to it – football, the beach, bullfighting and various parties. It’s not even commonplace to have computer clubs or Internet cafes, as has always been developed in the countries of the former Soviet Union.

In conclusion, it should be noted that in Valencia the development of e-sports is at a rather low level. But there are children who are ready to try themselves in this area, although not in the largest quantity. I would like to believe that soon the Spaniards, in particular Valencians, will declare themselves on the esports scene as conditional Swedes or Danes and dilute the cyber community with their presence.

A photo: Elevat; twitter.com/vcfesports; from the personal archive.

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