The development of the Spanish coach

Abstract

The development of sport in Spain during the twentieth century was a relatively slow process compared to its European counterparts. A two-way development occurred in sport: football experienced rapid professionalization, along with cycling and boxing, while the rest of sports remained amateur. This determined the status and role of the coach: while football was nourished by former players who developed a professional coaching career and the sport attracted foreign coaches to keep up with its international rivals, coaches of Olympic disciplines such as athletics barely kept in touch with foreign trends and coaching continued to be a voluntary and poorly specialized activity. It was only from the 1960s when, influenced by a process of relative international openness and economic growth, coaches experienced a progressive institutionalization of their position. The democratic process that emerged from 1975 and the subsequent organization of the 1992 Olympic Games stimulated the emergence of the specialized coach in several sports disciplines. This chapter explores these particularities and the basic characteristics of the Spanish coach during the Franco dictatorship and the first years of democracy until the organization of the Olympic Games (1939–1992) through the analysis of legislation, official documentation, oral sources, and the Press.