When the members of the Sports and Recreational Society Didactics entered the tribute to the historical clubs of the city that was held in the Crystal Gallery of the Cibeles Palace, sat aside, sections of the foci. Surrounded … Of giants such as the Real Club Puerta de Hierro, Real Madrid and Atlético de Madrid, among others, thought, modesty, that this was their site. «Then, someone from the organization asked voices where we were. They wanted us to get in the front row, because we are the twelfth oldest sports entity in the capital, ”Manuel González, president of an entity founded in 1927 proudly. which was called the Las Maravillas neighborhood, today Malasaña.
Its headquarters, located on Molino de Viento street, is a hotbed of people moving chess or needles, as appropriate. The entrance is full of small tables with boards and watches. The furniture mixes furniture from the beginning of the century with bar tables, one more sample of its hearth (and humility). The players are veterans, mostly men, although according to their president there are more than 200 partners, the smallest of 5 years and the older than 89. Between departure and departure, the conversation is encouraged.
On Thursday it was especially full, because in the main hall they had just started a scrabble course, the game of forming words chained on a board with letters chosen by chance. Occasionally, among the players, cartoonists also sneak in the day to day of the didactics. They have discovered that chess players do not move too much, so they are great models, says the president.
Today, in didactics, ten sports are practiced. The majority is chess. In fact, they have up to six teams that usually participate in the competitions of the Madrid Federation. A few years ago several brothers cousins were incorporated: the GO, Shogi (Japanese chess) and the Hnefatafl (Viking Chess). There are also partners who entertain them with the ladies, the dominoes, the ping pong, the aforementioned scrabble, the crochet and even the music.
“We have a group that sing pop and rock and come together to play the guitar and the ukelele,” says González. The club is undoubtedly eclectic. «If the statutes look at there is no reference to a specific activity, perhaps that is the secret of their survival. In fact, they specify that any activity that the partners want and adds that without restricting one one can be done. “If a group of members says they want to play monopoly, we have to buy one,” says its president. Therefore, in this sports group there are no specific schedules for each activity, “but only customs.” Any partner can go play whatever he wants.
Historical lagoons
As since its origins the didactics has been a neighborhood club, they do not have a complete file with the history of society, but its history is really that of the partners who have passed through there. «We have tried to investigate it, but we have many lagoons. In the end this is a place where people come to play. We do not know for sure even why is it called didactics. Yes, we know that it was founded on December 20, 1927, because there is a certificate that later requested, in 1931, someone from the group to the competent authorities, ”explains González while taking out of the safe of society, where they only keep old documents , a handful of papers, plasticized some and yellowish by the passage of time others.
“Some have brought us people who have investigated for us, as historians of ancient coffees in Madrid who discovered thanks to newspapers of the time that the football team the didactics participated in 1928 in the league of the Workers’ Sports Federation,” he says The president of the entity.
«Another essential archive is a rental contract of the old headquarters, the low sliding of San Pablo, 20, which establishes that since 1931 who would begin to pay for the rent would be the radical republican circle of the hospice, as it was called in the time to the neighborhood. These organizations of the Lerroux party were dedicated to hosting dissemination and entertainment associations, so we assume that the didactics fit there, ”explains González, who remembers that in the old headquarters there was a plaque that reinforced this theory and prayed: ‘Didactics : Sports and Teaching Society ‘.
In fact, some period newspapers even speak of the “lay schools of didactics.” In the ABC archive there are calls for conferences that were held in this building on issues such as ‘Esperantista poetry’. Before welcoming the didactics, by the way, by San Pablo’s Browder, 20 also passed Antonio Machado. But that is another story.
The future of the club during the Civil War and the postwar period, acknowledges Manuel González, is a mystery. “All we know is that the building was damaged by the bombings, and little else,” he acknowledges. They also suppose, although they do not have documentary support, that the didactics had a basketball club, since its old shield includes green and white stripes that were typical of these groups.
They also treasure in their tiny file a license of the sixties to put “a small ambigu” in the club, a space where drinks could be supplied but expressly prohibited trade with “intervened articles.” It was a way to avoid the black market. Today, that cafeteria is a self -service in which people serve and leave what costs in a small metal box hanging on the wall. It is another way to finance the club, which manages with the fees of the partners, eight euros per month for those over 16 years. “We even have a social fund in case any partner passes many troubles,” says González.
And Alfonso met the sea
From the sixties, the history of didactics connects with that of its oldest partners. We know, for example, that there was a section of hike because Alfonso met the sea for the first time thanks to one of the association’s trips. A thousand pesetas cost him the trip. «My sister left her children with my mother and we were both to Malaga. And there, in Motril, we saw the sea. Since then I have not erased and I am 81 years old, ”says this Madrid while making bobbin lace, wrapped in a club scarf, with other hooks.
He, he recounts, knew the entity because he worked in a grocer’s groove store in San Pablo’s low. At that time, he recounts, it was the meeting point for the residents of the neighborhood, who came there to talk and “do group therapy.” “It was a very familiar thing, such as going out to take the fresco in the villages,” he recalls. He, then, did not wove in the club. «I learned to make bobbins just to see my mother and grandmother. But before it is already known, I did not have to say that I liked it, because men did one thing and the women another. Thank God, or his equivalent, now everyone can do what he wants, ”he says with grace.
In that headquarters that had to leave in the 2000s because the building was in ruins, Iñaki, another of the veterans, there were personalities of the most diverse. They organized dances, meals were given at noon, there was Bingo on weekends … “It was like a rock of provinces, a social club of the time with a lot of roots that adapted to the needs of the neighborhood,” he says. He arrived at the end of the seventies with a group of friends to play chess there. And to the poker, he confesses between laughs, the king sport of the early morning of the didactics. “Then she didn’t get over, she woke up. And always surrounded by tobacco smoke, and nobody complained, ”he recalls with some nostalgia Iñaki. «We were integrating into that circle, which welcomed us as a brotherhood, and we were replacing the ancients. Just as others are coming. We are in a good time ».
Although the club adapts to the times and its people, some of these veterans miss that more social aspect. “Before, after a game we took something and we analyzed or chatted,” laments René, player and disseminator. “Today everyone is in a hurry.”
At the moment, they have not thought about the centenary, but it will be time to organize something special. Being so chameleonic, they will overcome the century of life.
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