As you pass over the France-Spain border at Irun and begin your drive along the beautiful A8 motorway, west across the roof of Spain, you pass the stunning Basque resort of San Sebastián and gradually head inland where the coast recedes from view and the foothills of the Pyrenees rise and fall stubbornly, refusing to flatten out. About half an hour into the journey, the mountains rise again, Mordor-like, and as the motorway begins to twist and turn less comfortably, a strange town appears on the right, with sallow high-rise flats clinging to the hillsides above the semblance of what looks like a community tucked inside a narrow gash in the rocks. This is Eibar, population 27,000, once the centre of the north’s armaments industry, but now a town struggling to survive in the current recession.

It’s a no-frills sort of place, and despite the beauty of the surrounding landscape, inside the actual town it feels claustrophobic and run-down, with narrow streets overhung on all sides by the brooding hills. They breed them tough up here, and the locals have a reputation of being frank but fair, friendly but slightly self-obsessed, as if there were nothing of particular value outside of their own peculiar habitat.

With the important cities of San Sebastián and Bilbao roughly equidistant, Eibar has always tried too hard to make a go of things, and has been slightly teased in the process. But now nobody’s laughing. Suddenly, the tiny town is the centre of attention, its own particular zenith peaking a mere 24 hours after Real Madrid won the ‘décima’ and drove the Spanish press to collective hysteria, prompting an adjectival whiteout. Spain’s main sports tabloid, Marca, devoted most of its pages to Madrid’s post-coital glow, but finally managed a photo of Eibar on the back cover, tacitly acknowledging their feat.

Eibar’s games are usually hidden in the deep centre of the paper, along with the advertisements and the weather forecast. Now, as the news of the décima inevitably begins to fade, Spain is waking up to the far more astonishing fact of SD Eibar’s new status, as a new member of La Liga, of Spain’s top flight.To describe Eibar’s achievement, you first have to look at the facts. The club were founded in 1940 and in 1944, short of a kit to play in, were lent a full Barcelona kit by the regional federation. The colours have stuck, and now Barcelona will finally come to town, 70 years later. For 28 seasons of Eibar’s history they have played in the Spanish third division, and spent a decent few years in the second, but never with any pretensions to glory.

They just hung in there, with their tiny ground, Ipurua (capacity 5,200) and their habitual mix of Real Sociedad and Athletic Bilbao loanee ponies and failed youth players, looking for something resembling a professional contract. Mix in a few hardened pros, put out to stud in the dusk of their careers, and the mix has usually resulted in a competitive stable, good enough to keep the Eibar hard-core of 2,500 fans happy. Xabi Alonso was sent here by Real Sociedad to be toughened up in 2001, as was David Silva in 2004-05 from Valencia. That season they almost went up, eventually finishing fourth after suffering from a nervous finish and allegedly being the victim of a conspiracy by the Spanish FA to keep them down – horrified as the authorities were by the prospect of the club spoiling the glamorous image being touted by La Liga back then – for marketing reasons.

The club were relegated the following season, and spent five of the next eight in Segunda ‘B’, Spain’s over-populated third tier. Promoted last season to Segunda ‘A’, they’ve led the pack for most of the season with pretty much the same squad, and were finally promoted on Sunday evening after defeating fellow Basques Alavés (remember them?) 1-0 at home, and waiting in the dressing-room to see if Las Palmas, their final mathematical pursuer, would draw or lose at home to Recreativo. When the players walked into the dressing-room Las Palmas were 2-0 up, but by the end of the game Recreativo had won 2-3, prompting the players to race out into a darkened arena to celebrate with the locals who had also remained behind, out on the pitch.

It’s hard to draw any parallels here. The smallest club ever to have played in the top flight in England were Glossop North End, who hit the English First Division back in 1899 on a population of some 30,000. The case for Eibar is far more surreal, given the more demanding modern context, their measly annual budget of €3.5m, the lowest wages paid to any team in Segunda, a capital value of €422,000 and average crowds of 3,000. The team have a strong Basque identity, and although they don’t pursue the Basque-only policy of neighbours Bilbao, they do prefer to stock their squad with as many of the region’s players as possible, further reducing the margins of movement. Thirteen of the 23-man squad are Basques but disappointingly only one (Jo Errasti) is actually from Eibar. Maybe that will change now, and in years to come.

However, there are some darker twists to the tale. Of the three players loaned out by Real Sociedad, Yuri, is definitely returning, and Dani García may follow him. The true star of Eibar’s show, and the scorer of the definitive goal last Sunday, ‘Jota’ Peleteiro – a player very similar in style and movement to David Silva – will also return to his parent club (Celta de Vigo), taking his famous model girlfriend Jessica Bueno with him and depriving the town of its last hint of exotica.

Well, until Real Madrid turn up to play, that is. The old warhorse Diego Rivas is unlikely to continue, and the club will need to strengthen at centre-back and up front, if they are to stand a chance of surviving. Maybe it doesn’t matter, since the mere existential thrill of seeing this team turn out against the big boys will be enough to generate fire-side stories for a century to come, and Real Sociedad have already promised to send over some surplus-to-requirement reinforcements.

The main problem is the reappearance of the conspiracy theory. Even though the club may finish as champions, the Spanish FA has insisted that Eibar raise €1.7m in capital value (25% of the average expenses of all the teams in Segunda) by 6 August, and that if they don’t, they will be relegated to Segunda B, the third division. Given that Eibar have no debt (practically the only club in the division who can say that) the demand seems unreasonable, to say the least. The club have issued 34,486 shares at €50 each hoping to raise the money. So far they’ve got up to 40%, but since club rules only allow a maximum holding of 2%, even Xabi Alonso (who campaigned recently in Madrid on behalf of the club) can’t write a very big cheque.

Even the league’s president has admitted that they are a ‘model club’, and that the situation is ‘unfair’. But Spain is different, as they say. Unless the money keeps coming in, the most romantic football story of practically the entire history of Spanish sport is about to be nipped in the bud.

Phil Ball is the author of ‘Morbo, the Story of Spanish Football’