Ubaldo Noble

Ubaldo Noble Malvido (1870 – 1919) was a Spanish football pioneer who played as a forward for some of the earliest Catalan clubs in existence such as Barcelona Football Club. His younger sister was Clara Noble, the wife of the poet Joan Maragall. His cousins George and Royston Saint Noble, also played football with a Barcelona club, but with the official one.

Early life Noble was born in Sarrià, Barcelona, in 1870 (Noble would have been born after June 1870 since he does not appear on the June 1870 census in Pennsylvania.) Since he lived in La Rambla, Noble likely attempted to join the British Club de Barcelona, located on La Rambla dels Capuchins, but that club was a strictly British entity, so even though he had English ancestry, Noble was still rejected, as suggested by the fact that his name never appears in any of the line-ups of the British Club. It remains unclear how they met, but it was most likely Noble who approached him after getting word that Reeves was recruiting members of British Club of La Rambla to play football. He was known as el tio Ubaldo (uncle Ubaldo) by the sons of Maragall.

Noble died in 1919, at the age of either 48 or 49. In the mid-1920s, "Tia Elvira", as the Maragalls called her, sold the house and sometime later went to Uruguay. In the late 1920s, the building housed the so-called clinic of Doctor Escayola, dedicated to traumatology and surgery, but which in fact also functioned as a care center for terminally ill patients that even had a mortuary for the deceased.