Origins, Catalanism and the Olympic tradition

As elsewhere in Europe, the aristocracy had been the drivers of modern sport in Madrid. However, in Catalonia the industrial bourgeoisie were the prime movers and, together with foreign nationals such as Hans – later Joan – Gamper, founder of FC Barcelona, they were intrinsic to the shaping of the sporting scene. Unlike the Basques, who promoted pelota and the herri kirolak (rural sports including stone-lifting, log-chopping and skiff racing), Catalans looked more to modern sport and international practices than to their own traditions. Accordingly, English sporting custom was a powerful ideological influence on athletes at the beginning of the twentieth century. The same effect is also well documented in the arts, as illustrated in Dominic Keown's chapter on Contemporary Culture, where a graphic obsession with the Hellenic elegance of the human form in noucentista painting went hand in hand with a poetic fascination with tennis and its accompanying social values of refinement.

However, Catalan associacionisme – the readiness of individuals with a common interest to come together and formally organize into societies – ensured that the bourgeoisie did not have a monopoly over sporting initiatives. At the turn of the twentieth century excursionisme – a catch-all term referring to rambling, hiking and expeditions into the Catalan interior – constituted the most vibrant and widespread physical-cultural activity within the country, in part because of its classless appeal. While excursionisme may certainly have become more recognizably a sport as the twentieth century progressed, it had originated rather as a philosophy of life; as a cultural and scientific – as well as physical – re-engagement with the Catalan landscape, geology, flora and fauna, born out of Renaixença desires to rediscover Catalan identity following the centuries of so-called decadence.

Excursionisme in the 1920s and 1930s, framed by the military dictatorship of General Miguel Primo de Rivera and later by the Second Republic, became infused with the values of hygiene, regenerationism, nationalism and citizenship, and offered an alternative to mass-sporting spectacles such as football. The Centre Excursionista de Catalunya, however, had not admitted women to their ranks until the founding of a mountain sports section and the first female competition was held in 1911.