Women’s football in Spain climbs one more step in its marked growth with hopes pinned on the World Cup that will take place from next Thursday the 20th in Australia and New Zealand. The national team faces its third World Cup and, despite its lack of experience, it is one of the candidates to go far in the tournament. Many were the ones who have helped women’s football to have a more than promising future today.
The selection has passed in half a century from clandestinity and the macho rejection of the seventies to professionalization and current recognition. A fight that now echoes with the names of Alexia Putellas, double winner of the Ballon d’Or, Jenni Hermoso, top scorer in the First Division of the main leagues in the world, Aitana Bonmatí, MVP of the last Champions League, or Salma Paralluelo, one of the most promising players in national women’s soccer.
haggle machismo
Before them, other generations of which few know their names despite the importance they had for this discipline, paved the way with courage and little support. And it is that if the girls currently wear the shirt of their team, ask for autographs from the players they have as models and demand their sticker albums, it is partly because of a group of pioneers who took a step forward against what was established and haggling the machismo of society.
Women’s football began to be organized throughout the Spanish territory in the 1970s, although it was not recognized in the country until October 21, 1980. In November 2019, the Spanish Football Federation (FEF), chaired by Luis Rubiales, remembered the pioneers who dared to play soccer when this organization turned its back on them and organized a tribute to thank them for the path they had begun to pave almost five decades ago.
“We fought and we have opened a path for the others to follow,” says Encarna Caracuel (Córdoba, 1952), one of the many anonymous women who opened the door to women’s football in Spain and the birth of a team that now dreams of a World Cup. . She had not turned 15 when she emigrated with her family to Catalonia and played soccer in secret. There she was discovered by the coach of the recently created Vic team, one of the participants in the 1st Catalan Women’s Soccer Championship. She became one of the most outstanding players in the tournament, being the top scorer with 59 goals, surpassing the second by 28. Some chronicles of her referred to her as “the best gunner in Spain.” Based on goals she was called up to the first state women’s team, to play the friendly between Portugal and Italy in 1983. «She worked 12 hours: eight at night and four in the afternoon, including Saturdays. And when she went out, the only thing she wanted to do was play soccer », she narrates. She came to receive an offer from an Italian club, but she had to reject it because her father refused to let her go, and she did not feel that he could go against her.
Visibility and equality
“In the fields they told you: ‘If you are a macho’, ‘go wash up’, ‘get into the kitchen’… There is still a long way to go, but now women’s football is beginning to have the support it had to have”, he insisted. at a recent event attended by Carmen Arce, ‘Kubalita’ (Valencia, 1956), the first official goalkeeper of the Spanish team. Her stage as a footballer lasted less than she would have liked. Injuries and her work, to help at home, forced her to abandon this sport. «Women’s football needs to stop comparing it to men’s football. We need visibility and equal rights, “says the former goalkeeper of Racing de Valencia (Marcol) and Hércules, who when speaking of equality does not speak of wages, but of equating working conditions with male colleagues. A debate that in recent times has intensified in women’s sport with the lack of professional resources and poor management as a backdrop.
Isabel Fuentes (Madrid) sadly recounts the episode in which she went to play in Turin in 1971 and they were not allowed to officially represent the Spanish flag because it was not well seen that women “kicked a ball.” A year before, Isabel played the first women’s soccer match in Spain. A Mercacredit-Sizam, promoted by Rafael Ruiz Muga, ahead of her time, whose result was the least of it. That party organizer, who traveled from the field to the barracks accompanied by the Civil Guard, wrote the book ‘The forgotten stars’, in which he reviews those first female figures from the world of ball who stood out in Spain. “Now it enjoys official recognition, but, like all conquests, there were times that were complicated by the mere fact of practicing this sport,” he points out.
#underground #elite