MADRID, 8 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
They often confronted the prevailing machismo of their time and were able to overcome obstacles to be a mirror for many of the women who followed them. Today, March 8, International Women’s Day, we want to highlight eight pioneers and role models who have paved the way for Spanish women’s sport to shine today at the top.
LILÍ ÁLVAREZ, EVERYTHING STARTED WITH HER
Elia María González-Álvarez y López-Chicheri, better known as Lilí Álvarez (Rome, 1905 – Madrid, 1998), is, without a doubt, the pioneer of women’s sports in Spain. In 1924, she became the first Spaniard to participate in the Olympic Games, doing so in tennis at the Winter Games in Chamonix (France).
Skiing, motor racing, mountaineering, horse riding, billiards… No sport could resist him, but it was tennis that made him go down in history. In 1929 she was proclaimed doubles champion at Roland Garros, just two years after losing the mixed doubles final, and she reached the Wimbledon final three times (1926, 1927 and 1928). In 1931, she shocked the British ‘great’ by playing for the first time with a skort, which would later become a trend.
“I was a three-time finalist at Wimbledon, something that no Spanish man has ever been. The tribute that they don’t pay me in Spain is paid to me there,” he acknowledged. Also a writer and journalist -one of the first to write sports chronicles-, her work as a communicator has inspired the Lilí Álvarez Awards, convened by the Women’s Institute in collaboration with the CSD and which highlight the journalistic works that best make visible and disseminate the female sport.
MARGOT MOLES, THE GREAT ATHLETE OF THE REPUBLIC
Spanish champion of athletics, hockey and skiing -the first in history-, the dazzling career of Margarita ‘Margot’ Moles (Terrassa, 1910 – Madrid, 1987) was cut short by the outbreak of the Civil War. That 1936, she was selected along with Ernestina Maenza to participate in the Garmish-Partenkischen Winter Olympics in downhill and slalom, and a year later she won the bronze medal in discus throw at the Popular Olympiad in Antwerp.
Together with her sister Lucinda and fellow athlete Aurora Villa, she participated in the founding of the current Real Canoe in 1930, when women had to swim during restricted hours. While she dominated the discus and weight modalities on the athletics tracks, the most multidisciplinary Spanish athlete of the thirties was proclaimed champion of Spain in hockey for three consecutive years with Atlético de Madrid.
With the arrival of the dictatorship, she was condemned to ostracism and disqualified as a teacher, and she had to start embroidering to get her daughter forward; her husband, loyal to the Republic, had been shot and she had been left a widow at the age of 32. She did not play professional sports again, and, in fact, women were banned from athletics as it was considered ‘masculinizing’.
AURORA VILLA, A REFERENCE ON THE SLOPES AND IN OPHTHALMOLOGY
When Aurora Villa (Madrid, 1913 – 2002) began to practice sports, this was “a laughing matter for many people”. She trained at the Instituto-Escuela de la Institución Libre de Enseñanza, one of the most liberal centers of the moment, at the same time that she was proclaimed champion of Spain five times and was a record holder in seven athletic disciplines.
As early as 1931, he achieved the world’s best hammer throw record. “Breaking records never attracted me, sport focused in this way is like slavery,” the Madrid native acknowledged in an interview, with a much more advanced mentality than the Spain of that time.
He also practiced mountaineering, swimming, canoeing, skiing, hockey, handball or basketball, which he combined with his medical studies, which he managed to conclude after the Civil War, in a promotion with four women and which he concluded with cum laude tuition. She was the first female ophthalmologist in Spain, although to practice she had to go to the protectorate of Morocco.
ANA MARÍA MARTÍNEZ SAGI, THE FIRST DIRECTIVE OF SPANISH FOOTBALL
Journalist, poet, social activist and sports lover, Ana María Martínez Sagi (Barcelona, 1907 – Sampedor, 2000) stood out as a javelin thrower while, in those early years of the Second Republic, she campaigned for suffrage and of female literacy.
His commitment led him to become the first directive in the history of Spanish football in 1934, when he entered the board of FC Barcelona. However, her frustrated attempts to create a women’s section of her caused him to resign from her position.
Exiled in France after the Civil War, she was a member of the Resistance during the German occupation, and only returned to Spain with the arrival of democracy.
MARI PAZ COROMINAS, THE DEED OF MEXICO ’68
On that October day at the Francisco Márquez Olympic Pool, Mari Paz Corominas (Barcelona, 1952) became the first Spanish athlete (male or female) to reach an Olympic final at the 1968 Mexico Games, by doing so in the 200 meter backstroke. She finished seventh, but she had already made history.
“Mine was Quixote-style, like Blanca (Fernández Ochoa) and Arantxa (Sánchez-Vicario),” he said in an interview with El País. After the Olympic event, she trained with Mark Spitz at Indiana University. However, at just 18 years old, she left high competition when everyone pointed to her as the future of Spanish swimming.
In 2018, he celebrated half a century of his deed in Mexico City by swimming across the Strait of Gibraltar at the age of 62 for solidarity purposes.
SAGRARIO AGUADO, THE PLUSMARQUE INTRODUCER OF THE FOSBURY STYLE
He inaugurated the Vallehermoso Stadium with the Spanish high jump record, but that was only one of the dozens of marks that Sagrario Aguado (Madrid, 1949) was in charge of establishing, just when the Franco regime allowed women to practice athletics again.
She took the height bar from 1.54 to 1.73 outdoors, where she set 12 records, and from 1.50 to 1.69 indoors, with 14 records, and she was the first to jump in Spain to the ‘ Fosbury style’ -with his back to the ribbon-.
CARMEN VALERO, QUEEN OF THE CROSS-COUNTRY
Carmen Valero (Castelserás, 1955) paved the way for the Spanish athletes with strides, in the mud where she was crowned cross-country world champion two years in a row, at Chepstow 1976 and Düsseldorf 1977.
Between these two events, she made history by becoming the first Spanish Olympic woman in athletics in Montreal 1976 in the 800 and 1,500 metres. In her country, she still had to put up with the “atrocities” that were dedicated to her for training and running in shorts.
PURIFICACIÓN SANTAMARTA, THE FIRST PARALYMPIC STAR
Since she completely lost her vision at the age of 8 due to congenital glaucoma, Purificación Santamarta (Burgos, 1962) knew that her life would be a career of improvement. A seller of coupons until her retirement in 2015, the Burgos woman became the great star of the 1992 Barcelona Paralympic Games.
He had already participated in the Paralympic events of 1980, 1984 and 1988 -with a loot of six medals-, but he reached his zenith in the Montjüic Olympic Stadium. With thousands of people cheering him on, Santamarta won the gold, all with a world record, in the 100, 200, 400 and 800 meter tests, a golden poker that has raised him to the Olympus of Spanish sport. In total, a record of 16 medals -11 gold- that has inspired other athletes such as Teresa Perales, Richard Oribe or Xavi Torres.