Sports, morality and body: The voices of sportswomen under Franco's dictatorship

551182 Research Article Sports, morality and body: The voices of sportswomen under Franco’s dictatorship Xavier Pujadas Ramón Llull University, Spain Beatriz Garai Basque Country University (UPV/EHU), Spain Fernando Gimeno University of Zaragoza, Spain Ramón Llopis-Goig University of Valencia, Spain Gonzalo Ramírez-Macías University of Seville, Spain José M Parrilla-Fernández University of Oviedo, Spain Abstract The aim of this research is to study sportswomen’s perceptions and experiences of women’s sport in Francoist Spain (1939–1975). The main objective is to analyse the social, moral and aesthetic elements that are present in the experience of these athletes. This study was carried out with an intentional sample of 24 women from Andalusia, Aragon, Asturias, Basque Country, Catalonia and Valencia. They were interviewed by a network of researchers from six universities. Outstanding results show the existence of social limitations to start sports practice (particularly in the post-war period); the importance of sport as a character-building aspect; sport’s remarkable influence on their body self-concept; and the incidence on sports of the mainstream moral Corresponding author: Gonzalo Ramírez-Macías, Department of Physical Education and Sport, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Seville, C/ Pirotecnia s/n 41013 Seville, Spain. Email: [email protected] discourse, which created a female model that even affected sports clothing. The main conclusion is that sportswomen in that period were pioneers and had to fight against most of society in order to develop their facet as athletes, as they would not follow the established model. Keywords Franco’s regime, gender, history of Spain, social history, women’s sport Introduction Research on the history of women in modern sports practice may be interpreted as studies on the processes of social inclusion for women, as women’s incorporation into sport contributed in the past to their inclusion in the welfare society (Trangbaek, 2007). In this context, studying the evolution of sport from a gender perspective provides us with social and cultural factors that are relevant to understanding the contemporary sports phenomenon and essential to rebuilding the role of women in the development of sport, association movements, education, public and private life, spectator sport, mass culture and competition in a society – that of the 20th century – mainly dominated by men. In this sense, within the Spanish context, the study of women’s sport during Franco’s period is particularly relevant, as it encompasses almost 40 years in the 20th century and, in this period, sports underwent a clear fascist-like transformation (González, 1999), which is still influential in our times. Although this topic has been pointed out by many researchers (as will suitably be justified in the section of theoretical background: Women and sport in Franco’s regime), no research was based on the personal experiences of sportswomen of that time. In this sense, it is necessary to conduct studies that, like this one, are based on oral history as a source of data collection.1 The fact of collecting data from the life stories of sportswomen who lived during Franco’s regime is not only quite a novelty in comparison to previous studies on this topic, but it also creates a tool for the recovery of the historical memory in sport (particularly women’s sport), as this is a historical period with scarce evidence in this sense and the possibility of data collection progressively decreases for purely chronological reasons. This kind of information (properly recorded, filed and catalogued) can be the basis for further research and for social dissemination. With this perspective, we proposed this exploratory research with two main objectives: firstly, to analyse the social, moral and aesthetic elements that were present in the experience of women practising sport during Franco’s regime (1939–1975), from an intentional sample of 24 oral history interviews in six regions: Andalusia, Aragon, Asturias, Basque Country, Catalonia and Valencia,2 secondly, to recover and preserve the oral memory of women who lived in this dictatorial period in connection to sport and physical activity, with the aim of promoting the recovery of historical memory in this field. With this twofold objective, we developed a project coordinated among Ramon Llull University, the University of Valencia, the University of Seville, the University of Zaragoza, the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU) and the University of Oviedo, with researchers from these centres setting up a Red de Investigación de Historia de las Mujeres y el Deporte (RIHMUD) [Research Network on History of Women and Sport],3 approved by the Programme ‘Women and Sport’ of the Sports Council (Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport). To select the sample, we used two criteria, one related to the historical period when interviewees practised some kind of sport, with a division of two groups corresponding to the periods 1939–1960 and 1960–1975. The latter group corresponds to the developmental period, when the Spanish sports reality underwent remarkable changes. The other criterion refers to habitat size, with the sample having a similar representation of rural and urban environments. A detailed account of the information from every interviewee can be found in the Appendix of this article. Once the sample was located, we carried out the interviews, which had two differentiated parts, one focused and another semi-structured with an open end. The first part was about the experiences of interviewees as sportswomen; the second, with questions presented in a pre-established order (Hammer and Wildavsky, 1990), was aimed at getting to know the social, moral and aesthetic determinants of these women’s sports experience. These kinds of determinants, collected in previous studies (Pujadas, 2007), ultimately provide us with a wide vision of the interviewees’ sports experience. Social determinants include such aspects as socio-economic level, family, gender roles or social visibility of women’s sport. Moral determinants refer to religious pressure, moral values in sports practice, induced guilt or requirements of modesty. Thirdly, aesthetic determinants focus on such aspects as clothing, body self-perception or femininity. In this sense, three dimensions were established, one for each kind of determinant. Every dimension had specific questions. Finally, the end of the interview was open so that interviewees could add what they considered appropriate in connection to their sports experience. As required, before doing this kind of interview, the group of interviewers was specifically trained in order to guarantee the correct use of this technique. Once the interviews were finished and the audiovisual and written material was transcribed and stored, two parallel data analyses were carried out by grouping them into categories particular to the social, moral and aesthetic dimensions. The triangulation of the categories resulting from the two analyses achieved a level of concordance higher than 90%, with the scarce discrepancies being solved by agreement of the teams involved in the analyses. In the following sections, after the necessary theoretical background, we focus on the main characteristics of the three dimensions analysed. These results will be discussed, bearing in mind other outstanding previous research, and then conclusions will be specified. Women and sport in Franco’s regime During Franco’s regime, sport underwent a fascist-inspired transformation, as happened with all the other domains of society (González, 2005). Right at the beginning of the Regime, it was used as a useful mechanism to transmit its ideology and, so, as Cazorla Prieto (1979) observed, the regime had no doubt to submit physical education and the entire sports system to rigid discipline and control by public authorities, with no possibility for social manifestation. Actually, what happened from 1939 was the replacement of the liberal sports system by a system of political control in the hands of Movimiento Nacional and, within it, of the Secretaría General del Movimiento, which was controlled by the domain of the sector that was ideologically identified with the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (FET y de las JONS) [Traditionalist Spanish Phalanx of the Assemblies of the National Syndicalist Offensive] (Pastor Pradillo, 1997). The Secretaría General del Movimiento was divided into five areas: the Frente de Juventudes (FJ) [Youth Front], the Sección Femenina (SF) [Women´s Section], the Sindicato Español Universitario (SEU) [Spanish Universities Syndicate], the Obra Sindical de Educación y Descanso (OSED) [Syndicated Action for Education and Rest] and, lastly, the Delegación Nacional de Deportes (DND) [National Sports Delegation]. Sport, as established in the Preamble of the Decree of 22 February 1941 that set up the DND (Boletín Oficial del Estado, 1941), is defined as a field in which the Phalanx State found one of the main tools for the global education of the Spanish man. Therefore, it was not a purely associative and pedagogical activity anymore and became an instrument with the main aim of disseminating the social and political model of an authoritarian state, particularly in the working class, which had to be taught in order to transform them into ‘new men and women’ who followed Francoist ideology (Delgado-Granados and Ramírez-Macías, 2014). This idea was not new at all, but a copy from the Nazi and fascist ideologies regarding sport. In fact, as pointed out by Herrero (2002), the purpose was following the German model even though Franco did not decide to invest deliberately in this field (training, fields,…), which provoked a very poor sport development. DND’s structure was divided into three sections: federative sports, military sports and sports of the Movement. This was combined with a strict control concerning the dissemination of ideas in sports press and mass media (Viuda-Serrano, 2011). From these sections, the most influential one for sport was sports of the Movement, since there were few federed sportswomen and, obviously, women could not access this field. The sports of the Movement included all the sport activities that were organized by the SF, the FJ, the SEU and the OSED. Within these organizations, the SF was the only one exclusively for women and, therefore, it would be the main agent in charge of feminine sport. The SEU (dedicated to the university context) and the OSED (specific from the working sphere) should not be forgotten. Anyway, we must highlight that the training purpose was specifically marked in the sports of the Movement. In fact, through sport, these organizations’ goal was not to transmit their ideological principles but the participants’ affiliation to them. These organizations even searched in a specific way, among these men and women, for those who were highly capable, with the aim of attracting them for higher responsibilities within the Movimiento Nacional. As Manrique (2012) states, the great organization that existed in sport did not leave any space for sport practice free from political control. This shows the importance that Francoism gave to sport and how it was used as a way to train. However, the social materialization of the new era in Spanish sport was particularly sterile in the first two decades of Franco’s regime, not only concerning the showier field of international competition, but also, and especially, concerning the impulse of sports activity among the population. At the end of the 1950s, the adjustments carried out showed a change of tendency that would be apparent in the following decade, the beginning of the so-called developmental period (Santacana, 2011). During this period and up to the dictator’s death, the obvious socio-cultural and economic transformations involved significant changes in the citizens’ relationship with sport. These changes, which cannot be regarded as opening, were particularly sportive and not exclusively indoctrinating. The most remarkable changes were these ones: the public experience towards spectator sport through the emergence of TV (in this sense, football is worth mentioning as the main paradigm of spectator sport in Spain); the protagonists’ cult of international sports feats, which happened despite shortages and lack of efficient policies for the preparation of top-level athletes (González, 2011); the enactment of the Law of Physical Education, 20th December 1961 (Boletín Oficial del Estado, 1961), which acknowledged physical education as an efficient instrument in the training sphere and as a preventive way of promoting health; and the development of new habits in connection with leisure and sport, foregrounding the campaign ‘Sport for All’, whose motto was ‘we count on you’. In the field of physical education and women’s sport, Franco’s period implied an important stop in their development, which had begun in Spain five decades before and which was strengthened during the 2nd Republic (Sánchez and Rivero, 2013). In particular, the special setback of high-level competitive sport (Olympic Games and international championships) must be pointed out, in which feminine participation was, in their best situations, testimonial and many times non-existent, as happened in London 1948 and Helsinki 1952 Olympic Games (Martín, 2010). It seems obvious that the not so much socio-sporting but structural effects in the Francoist political-sporting organization had a huge bearing on the process of expansion of the sports phenomenon among women. From the beginning, taking the complex organization explained above into account, the role of physical education and sports in the education of women had a direct relationship with the roles that they had been given from the established social order. During Franco’s regime, a woman was defined as a being substantially different from a man for religious and biological reasons. Works by such authors as Gallego (1983), Puig (1987), Barrachina (1989), Alted (1991) and Manrique (2010) allow us to establish the basic characteristics that determined the female model: being a mother and wife, always in the same context, the household, and always submitting to the male head of household. Physical education and sport became a simple instrument to educate mothers for bearing strong, healthy children, all seasoned with knowledge about child care and health, which were also fundamental elements in their education. The justification for sports practice specific for women was derived, as was clearly explained by Manrique et al. (2009), from explanations that came from different fields (scientific-medical, religious, and political). Firstly, scientific-medical arguments determined the need to establish a body hygiene and health programme, always on the basis of their main earthly mission: motherhood. Thus, exercise was always guided towards health promotion, trying to preserve their procreative function, which contributed to promotion of the stereotype of fragile people with little aptitude for physical effort. In line with this, the activities considered as appropriate to women were gymnastics, dance, swimming, hockey, skiing, basketball and handball (Suárez, 1993). As explained by Zagalaz (2001), athletics were excluded from sports particular to the SF until 1961, due to the physical effort implied and because it was considered to be masculinizing. Secondly, there are arguments based on the fundamentalist Catholicism of that time, which postulated that every physical activity for women had to strictly follow the ultraconservative moral rules imposed by the Church. This included everything from their clothing to decorous behaviour, and the fact that sports practice should not be against good Christian customs. This fundamentalism could reach the extreme that, for example, in 1950 the Archbishop of Valladolid went as far as to forbid women from riding a bicycle as he considered it to be sinful (Alted, 1991). Thirdly, traditionalist politics, from the beginning, used sport with an approach that subordinated it to the political ideal of service to the Nation, based on its indoctrinating potential (Chaves, 1960). Thus, sport and physical education were considered as physical preparation to fortify Spain: the man should be ready to serve his country, as well as the woman, but in this case she had to do so in her specific field, which was running the household and taking care of her children and husband. It is also true that the changes produced in this developing period softened the sports indoctrinating force, but in the case of women, these changes were less substantial than in the case of men. Hence, even in the developing stage, there was a higher level of control and indoctrinating in feminine sport than in the masculine one. The final aim was disseminating and consolidating the female model that the dictatorship intended to impose, since women were considered as the familiar basis and this was the basic unit that society tried to impose (Ramírez-Macías, 2012). Social determinants of women’s sport This section refers to the social structures and determinants that had a relevant role in the sports practice of our interviewees. Firstly, in relation to their immediate social environment, the role of the interviewees is usually considered to be that of people who broke the mould and even were against certain social stereotypes of their times. In this sense, we can clearly grasp some positive self-perception, but differentiated between people: To me, what kept me going was self-respect (…) From the day I started as an athlete until the day I left… the first gymnastics member here in the South, that was me, the first female (…) breaking the mould. (ACP, 2011, personal interview) However, this courage continuously came up against the social pressure on women in favour of the imposed female model. Hence, the attributes associated with those women who disregarded social control and the established model were not exempt from male chauvinistic forcefulness: (…) due to the people’s thinking, because they thought that we girls doing sport were half butch, and there was a tendency that the woman should not do sport, you see, those were complicated years for people who wanted to do sport like us, most certainly. (PSE, 2011, personal interview) However, when referring to the social context, it is also important to emphasize some aspects that promoted sports practice for women. In this sense, both the existence of physical-sports practice in the field of formal education (physical education in educational centres) and the support from their friends had a crucial role in the promotion of sport. The following quote provides us with an illustrative example: At school, we were a group of classmates or friends, those with whom you get along better, we were very restless, and then of course the gymnastics class was easy for us, we thought that it was a bit too routine, that it could hardly be called exercise, and then the father of a friend of mine who was already a coach because he used to coach us when we had the basketball team. (PFG, 2011, personal interview) Equally important for the introduction into sport was the informal field of sociability in the sports field, represented by spontaneous sports practice developed in class, as well as familiar influence: In the street, in those times, then, we played at lot in the street, there were swings, we played with spinning tops, hopscotch, and we played football a lot. Then, near Ciudad Jardín there was a children’s park, and we also played there, you could do some gymnastics because there were hoops there … (FLA, 2011, personal interview) My father used to be a footballer, he had cousins who played basketball, he had a cousin who played table tennis (…) in the family there was this sports atmosphere. (PSE, 2011, personal interview) In this context, the formal organization of women’s sport came under the SF, the SEU, which also belonged to the Phalanx, and private sports clubs. The first of these organizations had a remarkable role in the regulation of women’s sport, particularly in Andalusia, Aragon and Asturias. In this sense, the explanation given by CML is worth highlighting: (…) many people from here, from Zaragoza, people from known families, used, as I did, the Women’s Section to do sport, because even in Mountaineers of Aragon they recognize this, if it hadn’t been for the Women’s Section, skiing… would only have been practised by an elite, nothing, just half a dozen families would have been in conditions to do so, first because of accommodation and then because there was nowhere to go to learn to ski. (CML, 2011, personal interview) In its turn, the SEU provided access to sport for university women. It has to be noted that many of them joined this union because of the possibility that it offered them to practise sport and not because of ideological support: Back then, we all belonged to the SEU and this way we had the right to do sports… it was some sort of being a federated member, I don’t know if it was a federation, with the exception of not being professional. But at the University being federated meant belonging to the SEU, it was the SEU that controlled the games, everything. (FLA, 2011, personal interview) Private sports clubs promoted sports practice and competition among sportswomen, but only in Barcelona and the Basque Country. Curiously, that was not the case in the other regions studied. As an illustrative example, you can read BDM’s explanation about the club that she was a member of and the tennis competitions that this club took part in: As I say, in Jolaseta we played tennis. When there were championships, you went with the Navarre people… Then there were some people and among them it was me… you would play singles, doubles and mixed, and it was a Basque-Navarre championship, now they call it the Euskadi championship, but then it was Basque-Navarre. Each province had a representative. As Jolaseta we were the best team in the province… All the clubs had teams but Jolaseta was the best. Then the champion was the representative of the club and Biscay in the Basque-Navarre. Then I was the representative of the club and Biscay. The championships organized by clubs were member championships, and then they were among clubs, and then the federation, that was more … (BDM, 2011, personal interview) Concerning the three organizations that held women’s sport, the SF is worth mentioning, as it was the institution with hegemony in the field of sports activity for women. The perception that interviewees had of this hegemonic situation was polarized in two opposite positions. On the one hand, those who were members of the SF, such as PCF claimed that: (…) there were many people, because with the Women’s Section, which was the one to hugely mobilize Physical Education at school and many places, then we started to do gymnastics with the Women’s Section, and for this reason I did the Physical Education course and also started to teach gymnastics. (PCF, 2011, personal interview) On the other hand, other interviewees, who were not linked with this organization, did not appraise the task of the SF positively; this is the case of PSE and RPC: (…) it was complicated first because there was a monopoly of the Women’s Section, that the little sport we did was very monopolized by the Women’s Section. (PSE, 2011, personal interview) (…) I mean that those were moments that, at the level of sport, real sport and well done, right, the Women’s Section did a great damage to sport, let’s say. (RPC, 2011, personal interview) In addition, and although there were organizations that, with more or less success, promoted women’s sport, there were also other important barriers for the access to sports practice. According to the interviewees, the most important ones were the negative consideration of sport by parents, particularly mothers, the socio-economic determinants, especially in the post-war period, and the little support from the family when having to travel to participate in competitions. Finally, other kinds of barriers are also worth mentioning, those that led to quitting sport, with the following ones being the most usual: economic needs that forced them to give up practising sport and take a paid job, marriage and sports injuries. Nevertheless, the most determining factor for dropping out sports, according to the interviewees, was pregnancy and subsequent motherhood. A very clarifying example in this sense is PSE’s life experience: (…) because I married and got pregnant, I did, and I started the season but as I got pregnant, I have a brother-in-law who is a gynaecologist and he told me let’s drop out this thing of sport (…) For me, it was very satisfying, I was very willing to have, have children, I mean, and I assumed that if I had children I wouldn’t be able to do it as sports practice, it could be as a hobby to keep in shape one day a week and that’s it. (PSE, 2011, personal interview) In the few cases when motherhood and family life were combined with sports practice, it is noticeable that there usually emerged a sense of guilt about it: (…) that of the family is what I did the worst because, of course, I would practically see my children, then, as much as men see them nowadays, almost like let me kiss you goodnight. (PIL, 2011, personal interview) Therefore, as a summary, these sportswomen did not follow those patterns imposed on them, which caused them many problems in their immediate environment. However, there were also aspects that boosted their sports practice, such as the existence of Physical Education at school, their circle of friends, or those organizations that promoted the women’s sport of the period. In particular, it is to be noted that 17 out of 24 interviewees had male agents in their environment as social agents that led them to sport practice. Mainly, these people were fathers (14 cases), although there were also brothers (two cases) and a secondary school teacher. The rest of the interviewees took up practising sport due to the SF. In this respect, the task of the SF is well appraised by those interviewees from less developed areas of Spain, as well as by those with a similar ideology to that of Franco’s regime; it is the contrary in the case of those who lived in industrialized areas or were alien to this organization. For the latter, the task of the SF was negative, and they assessed sports clubs as the organizations that better promoted women’s sport. In fact, the number of women who regarded positively the SF’s role was 12. This is half of the interviewees, three of whom were from Andalusia, three from Asturias, three from Valencia and three from Aragon. It is also important to notice that all the women who were interviewed in the two most industrialized areas of the country, Catalonia and Basque Country, negatively regarded the SF’s role. Finally, the main cause for dropping out of sport was not the age or injuries, as could be expected, but marriage and, especially, motherhood. This meant that, despite being models that broke with stereotypes of the period, once they had achieved the big mission given to them by the regime, being mothers, they would usually quit sports practice to rear their children. Consequently, in those few cases in which this did not happen, feelings of guilt were frequent. Thus, in the 24 interviews that were done, in just one case (IRM), quitting sporting life was due to an injury. The main reasons for quitting sport were marriage and motherhood (15 cases). Other secondary reasons was incorporation into working life (six cases), on ‘the ways of feeling and applying a system of values, of behaving’ (Tuñón de Lara and Biescas, 1987), as can be grasped from our interviewees’ stories. Nevertheless, middleclass or middle-upper-class women, coming from the city and with a sports family background, perceived that the family would naturally assume their wish to practice sport. The relationship between women’s sports practice and family context seems to be not very relevant either from a moral or social point of view. The body-aesthetic dimension was closely linked to the influence of mainstream morality and to the representation of the ideal model of Phalanx woman (Barrachina, 1989). The doctrine concerning clothing aspects that was imposed by the national Catholicism in the post-war period resulted in specific guidelines about the size of skirts and the use of stockings, as well as the attitudes of women in specific contexts, such as the beach (Abella, 1978). This doctrine caused many reactions in the women’s body selfperception, with their common denominator being the allusion to the female body model socially accepted as attractive in the eyes of men: the first kind of reaction was positive and related to sports practice (because the existence of attraction is recognized in the sports context or through the social acceptance of one’s own body); the second was a negative self-perception when doing sport; and the third was an androgynous, socially non-accepted self-perception due to the continued sports practice. Those women who practised sport during the first years of Franco’s regime referred to the compulsory nature of using uniform at school age and also mentioned the unavoidable hiding of their body and overlapping of clothes. They also mentioned the sensation of discomfort and their difficult sports practice resulting from the need to comply with the guidelines concerning sports attire. All this confirms what historiography has frequently described about the promotion of ‘external appearance and obedience’ among SF students in the 1940s (Manrique et al., 2009), as well as the moral bias in ‘the style of clothing when doing physical activities’ (Manrique, 2011). Sportswomen who started or continued their sports practice in the 1960s noticed a process of change concerning the external appearance, with a tendency to liberalize customs and give priority to the sportswoman’s comfort. The laxity in the moral doctrine concerning clothing was celebrated by those sportswomen who began their sport practice in the middle of the post-war period and was perceived as a change that had an impact on women’s liberalization. This cannot be considered as separate from the social transformation in the more general fields of urban leisure, tourism and new aspects in the Press Act of 1966, which increased the liberalization of information and the transmission of new habits and customs (González, 2011). Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/ or publication of this article: This work is included in the project ‘Mujeres, deporte y dictadura. La memoria oral de las mujeres deportistas bajo el Franquismo (1939–1975)’, funded by CSD 2011 (0022/UPR 10/11). Notes 1. This study has led to an article about the general results of the oral research: Pujadas et al. (2012). 2. The Appendix collects the main data of the 24 interviewees. 3. The main objectives of this network are the recovery of women’s history in the framework of the social history of sport in the Spanish State and in every community studied by the research groups, as well as the development of studies coordinated among the different participating teams and universities. The network was set up in the year 2010 and has been recently enlarged with research teams from the University of La Coruña and Camilo José Cela University in Madrid. 4. The term puchos is a synonym of pololos (knickerbockers): they were short loose trousers, adjusted at knee level; girls would put them on top of their skirts to do sport. 5. With the word ‘companion’, the interviewee refers to friends from the opposite sex with whom they began her friendship after practising sport. It has to be foregrounded that, within this context, conditions were the same for men. This was not observed in other social spheres. 6. 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Name Year and place of birth City Region Linking with SF (Y/N) Socioeconomic level Origin (rural/ urban) Sports CRP 1920, Barcelona Barcelona Catalonia N Middle U Mountaineering, climbing, fencing, skiing, and athletics IRM 1952, La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz) Barcelona Catalonia N Low U Football PSE 1937, Barcelona Barcelona Catalonia N Middle U Basketball and swimming RPC 1930, Barcelona Barcelona Catalonia N Middle U Swimming, tennis, mountaineering, and climbing LAI 1924, Pola de Laviana (Asturias) Pola de Laviana (Asturias) Asturias Y Low R Handball EAC 1930, Oviedo Gijón Asturias Y Middle U Basketball LVV 1948, Gijón Gijón Asturias Y Middle U Volleyball LMG 1945, Gijón Gijón Asturias N Middle U Canoeing, basketball, skiing, volleyball, and mountaineering BDM 1929, Bilbao Bilbao Basque Country N Upper U Tennis and golf MMJ 1933, Begoña (Biscay) Bilbao Basque Country N Upper U Swimming and football MGC 1927, Vitoria Vitoria Basque Country N Middle U Swimming, skiing, mountaineering, and gymnastics ELB 1933, Las ArenasGetxo (Biscay) Las ArenasGetxo (Vizcaya) Basque Country N Middle U Golf (Continued) Table 1. (Continued) Name Year and place of birth City Region Linking with SF (Y/N) Socioeconomic level Origin (rural/ urban) Sports ACP 1943, Sevilla Sevilla Andalusia Y Middle U Gymnastics and parachute jumping PCF 1925, San Vicente de Alcántara (Badajoz) Sevilla Andalusia Y Middle R Gymnastics, basketball, and handball OMH 1935, Sevilla Sevilla Andalusia N Low U Basketball FLA 1937, Sevilla Sevilla Andalusia N Upper U Basketball, handball, and volleyball ADL 1921, Xàtiva (Valencia) Xàtiva (Valencia) Valencia Y Upper U Field hockey, football, handball, and swimming MPA 1938, Xàtiva (Valencia) Xàtiva (Valencia) Valencia Y Middle U Volleyball, basketball, gymnastics, athletics, and swimming RLF 1938, La Pobla Llarga (Valencia) Xàtiva (Valencia) Valencia Y Middle U Volleyball and basketball VBL 1937, El Bergel (Alicante) Valencia Valencia N Low R Swimming PFG 1952, Andorra (Teruel) Andorra (Teruel) Aragon N Middle R Basketball and athletics PIL 1944, Zaragoza Zaragoza Aragon Y Upper U Tennis, swimming, athletics, and basketball ASM 1933, Reus (Tarragona) Zaragoza Aragon N Middle U Spearfishing, horse riding, athletics, tennis, and mountaineering CML 1928, Peralta (Navarra) Zaragoza Aragon Y Middle U Swimming, skiing, basketball, and tennis SF: Sección Femenina .