Last November, Sara Estévez turned 99 years old. A journalist from Bilbao and from Athletic, her professional career, mainly in radio, is an example for the generations that have followed her. Woman and journalist specialized in sports. What’s more, in football. A pioneer.
Sara Estevez, Sarita In the sexist world that he lived in, he made his way onto the airwaves of Radio Juventud de Bilbao. For years he ran a successful sports program, Stadium. But no one knew that behind a pseudonym with independent and often sharp opinion, Marathon, there was a woman. He wrote his chronicles, went to San Mamés among the public and took his notes in a notebook half hidden between his knees. Then, their opinions, their free criticism, which on some occasions caused serious problems for the station, were read on the air by an announcer, a man. And he signed as Marathon.
Bilbao pioneer of sports journalism, like María Luisa Antem was in Barcelona
Everyone wondered who it must be, no one suspected that it was a woman and very few knew the secret.
Born on November 4, 1925, almost 100 years old, Sara Estévez saw her studies cut short by the war. Orphaned by her father since she was two years old, a sister, a teacher, taught her to read and write. He did not complete higher education nor is there any record of his registration in the Official Registry of Journalists (ROP) that was established by the Franco regime to control who could access the press and, above all, who could be in charge of an informative publication and were responsible for what was published.
The ROP number was for years the identity card of the Spanish journalist and the symbolic number one was awarded to Francisco Franco Bahamonde, whose quality as “founder of the magazine” was highlighted. Africa in 1924 and collaborator of Above with pseudonyms Hispanicus, Macaulay and Hakim Booras well as honorary president of the Madrid Press Association.”
Sara Estévez’s card
As a teenager, Estévez studied shorthand, typing and accounting. He got a job in the offices of a chemical company in Lamiako and with his first extra pay he had the pleasure of acquiring an Athletic Club season ticket. She already had a permanent place in San Mamés, although she was not a full member because the club did not accept the entry of women. The right to vote or access to management positions were reserved for men, one more of Franco’s impositions of those times.
In 1952, Sara Estévez signed up for a call from Radio Juventud for the Radio Art category. And then, when one day someone asked “Who here goes to football?”, only his hand was raised. From there he began to write match reports.
“Paco Blanco was the one who read my chronicles and neither the players nor the managers knew that I wrote them,” he explained to Jon Rivas in a report that appeared years ago in The Country. He also recognized her bravery and her spirit of improvement: “I learned everything on the street, I am a girl of the war and the post-war.”
Estévez was a pioneer, an advanced one. As was another sports journalist in Barcelona, this one is registered in the ROP: María Luisa Antem. His interviews and reports became common in the pages of the sports weekly. They saywhere he began writing in June 1955. Football, skating, swimming, and finally he specialized in basketball. Years later he also worked in the TeleXpress and opened up to the world of cinema and fashion. That’s when he directed the magazine Magdaa luxurious publication published by the emblematic perfumery and luxury goods store of the same name, on Paseo de Gràcia (later also in Plaza Calvo Sotelo, today Francesc Macià), owned by the Oranich family, the parents of the feminist lawyer and defender of political prisoners Magda Oranich.
Sara Estévez, like María Luisa Antem, opened a path that has not been easy or short, that of women in sports journalism. Until 1973, twenty years after joining the radio, he did not sign his opinions or stand in front of the microphones. Stadiumthe most followed sports program in Euskadi, was on the air until 1984.
It was also difficult for Athletic to accept female members, it did so at a meeting in April 1979. Sara Estévez retired at the age of 65 and donated her personal archive to the Bilbao club’s museum. Until he was 94, he maintained an opinion column in The Mailfrom where he analyzed the current events of his Athletic team, in memory and well-deserved tribute to those times when all the red and white fans, including the footballers, were waiting for the opinion of the mysterious Marathon. But Marathon was not heit was her.
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