While the last few weeks in Spanish football have been dominated by the battle at the top between Barcelona and Real Madrid, there have also been potentially encouraging signs from those most likely - Qatari money aside  -  to properly challenge the ongoing dominance of Spain’s big two. Coming in under the radar amid all the Clásico hype were announcements of possibly significant progress in new stadium projects at both Atlético Madrid and Valencia.

Atlético were first out on December 5th, when more detailed plans were put forward for their new home on the site of the current ‘La Peineta’ athletics stadium in Madrid’s eastern suburbs. The idea of moving across town has been around since at least 2007 when Atlético were involved as part of an unsuccessful Olympic Games hosting bid by the city authorities. The club now seem confident they can pull it off at last, with work scheduled to begin this month. The required construction and renovation is expected to cost Atlético €195m (plus tax, although that’s not always a worry at Atléti, see below), but that should be financed by an agreement to sell their current home the Vicente Calderón to brewers Mahou.

If all goes to plan Atlético will kick off the 2014/2015 season at the likely to be brand-named stadium, which will have 70,000 seats (20,000 more than the Calderón) and lots of fancy revenue generating executive suites (which the Calderón lacks). It does look pretty impressive in this slow starting but ultimately uplifting promotional video. “This is one of the most important days in the history of the club,” said Atléti president Enrique Cerezo at the announcement.

That’s if all goes to plan. Atléti fans are generally wary of celebrating any news coming out of the club - or believing anything said by Cerezo or the club’s majority shareholder Miguel Ángel Gil Marín. Any optimism generated by the announcement was mostly deflated by a shambolic 2-4 loss at Espanyol last weekend, and then a run of negative stories about the club in this week’s Spanish papers.

Coach Gregorio Manzano is widely assumed to be on the way out. José Antonio Reyes - one of the last links to the Europa League winning side of just two years ago - is rumoured to have already agreed a move to Galatasaray. El País revealed the depth of the club’s continuing financial woes, including €215m owed to the taxman as well as Gil Marín’s €1m plus annual salary. AS took a look at their transfer outlay over the last decade, calling the €423m spent on 108 players of 43 different nationalities “indecent, immoral” and a “succession of errors”. Given this type of carry-on, a summer 2014 completion date for the new stadium looks ambitious.

Valencia soon followed with their own new stadium news. In 2007, with a Spanish property bubble just about to burst, the club gambled on the local property market and lost. This left them with two grounds: current home Mestalla which they wanted to sell but couldn’t, and the imaginatively titled ‘Nuevo Mestalla’, on which they spent €150m in half-building before running out of cash and stopping work in February 2009.

Last Tuesday Valencia president Manuel Llorente said the club had reached an agreement with Spanish bank Bankia to get €250m for the current Mestalla site and another loan of €110m to complete the Nuevo Mestalla. Llorente called the announcement a “historic milestone” which would allow the club “to make a jump in quality in all areas” and their video presentation is also pretty impressive: It seemed promising news for Los Che’s fans.

Llorente seems a good deal more competent than his counterparts at many Spanish clubs. He has definitely improved Valencia’s off-the-field affairs since returning to the club in 2009, selling stars like David Villa, David Silva and Juan Mata for big money while providing enough support for coach Unai Emery to put together a balanced squad widely recognised as La Liga’s third best. Within the reports of the new bank arrangement however was news that Valencia’s total debt had now risen to €360m - less than the €500m owed a few years ago, but still a pretty spectacular number. Also, there is as yet no confirmed timeframe for the move. It remains likely though that next summer will again see big name departures (Roberto Soldado perhaps) and Emery again scrambling for bargains. And probably the following summer too.

A positive spin on the stadium developments at both clubs would be that they are putting in place the infrastructure required to build a substantial challenge to Spain’s big two. That requires a pretty optimistic outlook, given the size of the gap both have to make up. Either side of announcing the Mestalla financing deal Valencia crashed out of the Champions League and lost 2-1 at Real Betis, while the Espanyol defeat leaves Atlético closer to the bottom of the Primera División table than a Champions League place. Signs of progress, maybe, but a long, long way to go yet.