Polo: Social Distinction and Sports in Spain, 1900–1950*

Abstract

Sports played a main role as a catalyst of the social change between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Historiography has mainly emphasized its connection with the unstoppable arrival of the masses. However, exclusivity, luxury, and social distinction were very much embodied in some sports and reinvigorated by them. Moreover, how did elites cope with the irruption of sports as a form of sociability and social mobility? Polo provides one of the answers to this question. The definition, and exclusion, of the elites through a sport is the main topic of this article, and how social inequality boundaries sometimes depend on a subtle mixture of cultural, economic, and symbolic power. The analysis is posed in an extremely complex historical period, when Spain had many similarities with European and American societies experiencing tremendous transformations. This chronicle article traces the development of polo in the country, its connection with the monarch and some central characters. The controversy that emerged within the elites because of the new – and for some negative – implications of these activities is then analysed, followed by a discussion of the connections between the elites and polo in the tumultuous 1930s and 1940s.