"Take the shovels" is a term that, when reading it, we almost always hear in the voice of a fed up parent. A parent fed up with you, fed up with the beach, fed up with his life. "Take the shovels" is almost the last thing that father or mother has left before committing a crime. It is a spigot, a vanishing point to the summer vacation torture to which an entire family has been led. At what point did all this seem like a good idea? Paying like a millionaire for being condemned to the sun, in the middle of inelegant crowds, with the pores of the skin blocked with sand and salt, salt and sand. Summer radioactivity that devours and destroys books you never read, bottomless wicker baskets, soft sandwiches, dazzled cell phones, towels and bathing suits of a thousand colors, some waving in the wind and others in the self-confidence of liberated buttocks.
"Take the shovels" is a call to order. A voice of someone sensible who, in the midst of chaos, decides that the time for meaningless nonsense is over. Seeing two guys playing spades on the seashore is a parenthesis of civilization in the midst of barbarism. A necessary reminder that culture exists, has rules and a certain sense of proportion and transcendence. To see two guys playing spades on the seashore is to be Bob Dylan in the chorus of We are the world, it is to immediately fire Rubiales, it is to teach someone who does not know how to read and write.
The origin of this summer sport known as Juego de Palas is not clear. There is a traditional and left-wing version and another, quite the opposite. Probably the truth is the latter. Both take place on the beaches of Santander. The first is the one defended by Mariano Pérez who indicates that said game began in 1928 on the Magdalena beach, near the Tennis Club. A group of youngsters were dedicated to taking advantage of the balls that were thrown and lost from said Club and they dedicated themselves to playing with them. First with string rackets and on wet sand with a boat and then with wooden rackets, on dry sand and without a boat. This version has the advantage of kicking off the sport in a patriotic way and working class vibes.
The other version places everything on a trip that Gustavo Gallardo, a millionaire from Granada who lived in Santander, made with his friend José María Avendaño, in a Rolls Royce to Biarritz (France). It was in the late 1930s. The two friends watched as French boys and girls played with a red sponge ball which they beat with wooden rackets. Upon returning to Spain, they commissioned a cabinetmaker with similar rackets and that's where it all began with a tournament at a Club called Caracola.
As it may be, the "Grab the shovels" and carrying it out constituted from the outset, a popular and successful sport. Purists call it “Palas Cantabras” but there is no known beach on the Spanish coast, in the last seventy years, that someone has said to another “Take the Cantabrian shovels” without having received in return a reason for mental concern.
Why it was decided that this game in its basic modality – pot-bellied father and unbearable son or daughter – be played on the seashore also brings together different theories. A priori, it is presumed pleasant because while the sun is designing what your carcinomas will be like, the freshness of the sea water, the waves covering your feet and rising up your calves, does so. Another theory is that the doctor recommended seawater for varicose veins and psoriasis and, more or less, that's how you comply. A third tells us that you play spades on the seashore because that is where you can bother people the most. The one who walks up and down, in pairs, non-stop talking like the taxi drivers in that Morrisey song. Disturbing the one near the water with their towels, taking advantage of the sun, its reflection and the possibility of considering the sea as a sink included in the bedroom itself. Choose the theory you prefer.
The game has the paradox that, contrary to most, it is not competitive but, quite the contrary, it seeks the cooperation of the partner. That is, it is a game without an opponent. The fun of the Game of Blades is that the blows are increasingly difficult for the opponent but that he returns them and the more, the better. It is a game of improvement in which you need the other to achieve it. It is strange that with these premises, this game has worked so well in our country because it is obvious that there is no Spanish family that has not had, has and will have shovels at home. There will even be one who says that without shovels there is no home and it is likely that he is right.
If one of the players only seeks to humiliate the opponent, the game will soon end up leaving him for no reason. In a way, the barbarism that surrounds the players – with its rules, its respect and savoir faire – will eat away the ruins of pagan temples and Christian churches like the Amazon jungle. If the one who is dedicated to breaking the game is the son or daughter, it would not hurt to remember that who said "Take the shovels" was a parent fed up with life and with just enough patience to stay away from the Penal Code.
Played well consists in the fact that the ball does not bounce on the ground and that a player cannot hit the ball twice. It seems easy. It is easy. So easy that it's deadly boring right away. It is possible to enter the sea to look for a lost point or make false excuses because the ball has hit a body on a towel. But other than that, it's boring. There is no known case of a Game of Shovels on the seashore that has lasted more than ten minutes.
The blows are the usual ones of racket sports: Drive, Backhand, Above the Head or Below the Waist. Of all of them, the most humiliating is the latter if you fail and the most epic if you manage to answer the characteristic left ball. If the person who is forced has abandoned his diet and has a belly, it is possible that in addition to meniscus problems, he is at risk of stroke. It is worth remembering that sometimes, as in life, it is worth losing a difficult point if you preserve your dignity with it.
