Spanish Sport and the Challenges of Its Recent Historiography

This article strives to bring together the diverse strands of literature on the role and development of sport in Spain to provide a resource for future scholars. The first section briefly surveys the history of Spanish sport over the course of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including bullfighting because of its symbolic importance. The middle section focuses on the historiography of sport and especially bullfighting, football, and the Olympics. The largest amount of work has considered the role of sport in Francoism, national and regional identities, gender roles, and the media. Finally, the article concludes by noting that the field suffers from a lack of cohesion among its scholars and too much focus on football, Madrid, and Barcelona; it also needs to ground itself more effectively in the larger historical narrative. Though weaknesses now, these also provide clear directions for future contributions.