The History of Rugby in Spain: Part 2. From 1924 to the Second Republic

Abstract

Following the establishment of rugby in Catalonia at the beginning of the 1920s, it was also introduced in the “Central region”. This coincided with the dictatorship period of Miguel Primo de Rivera, a time when the first federation matches between Barcelona and Madrid were taking place. There were underlying personal interests at the heart of the question but also conditioning political factors. The objective is to continue to provide information about the development of Spanish rugby, but taking into account the social and political setting of that time in history. This is made possible through an exploration of the historical sports and news press but also a review of other studies that are pertinent to the contextualisation. It is concluded that during the dictatorship Spanish rugby found itself in a difficult centralised and repressive political context, which produced a hostile environment for any manifestation of Catalan sporting nationalism. While the hegemony of Catalan rugby was never in question, by the 1930s the sport had also become firmly rooted in university settings in the Spanish capital.