The Birth of the Sports Press in Spain Within the Regenerationist Context of the Late Nineteenth Century

This study tackles the birth and development of the sports press in Spain from 1865 to 1899, linked to the need of a bourgeois society to emulate the English lifestyle, characterised by the sports craze. The sports press in Spain fitted extremely well in the late nineteenth century, encouraged by the Regenerationist movement. This is clear by the growth in number of sports publications, by the promotion of physical culture by Regenerationism and by the use of such publications to spread Regenerationism's approach to sport. Both primary and secondary sources were used in the research process. With regard to primary sources, archives containing specific documentation on the origins and early years of the sports press in Spain were examined. A total of 85 sports publications were counted in 18 different towns, but mostly concentrated in Madrid (28) and Barcelona (24). The most widely represented sports in these were cycling (25) and hunting (18). Among those publications that were not specific to one sport, 13 titles included the English-language term ‘sport’, and only two incorporated the newly coined Spanish word, ‘deporte’. Los Deportes (1897–1910) is the most important publication of this period and the foundation stone of modern sports journalism in Spain.