When Carmen Valero won her two cross country world championships in 1976 and 1977 or participated in the Olympic Games that ruined Montreal in 1976 – the first Spaniard in an Olympic event – this country had a strange relationship with sport. Very strange.
Thus, to the marchers who trained at the Serrahima stadium in Barcelona, they shouted “faggots” from a distance, like the one who says good morning or good afternoon. And the few women who stood out – Carmen Valero or the swimmer Maria Paz Corominas – were looked at with indulgence, perhaps because, unlike the first female soccer players, people did not know if their specialty was harder than washing dishes in the kitchen, the natural habitat of the girls in the words of the populace.
Spain was not only sexist, what happened to Spain and weighed on it was a tremendous inferiority complex, in all areas. If sport was an international measuring stick, ours was regret and frustration. It should be remembered that the Spanish soccer team did not even qualify for the World Cups in Mexico '68 and Germany '72. Olympic medals? With the fingers of one hand. In short: we didn't make a right turn.
Carmen Valero's successes were hers. They did not obey Olympic plans or programs, they lacked sponsors and for prizes they had sports equipment, plane tickets, per diems and – very typical – the management of work permits. If that wasn't a hobby...
Given the national inferiority complex, Carmen Valero's successes were received with admiration and a paternalism as well-intentioned as it was enormous. The unfortunate thing is that it was a discipline with little television outside of the Olympic Games. Of course, the great Carmen Valero had a “feminine” physique, which saved her from comments that today would report to the judicial bench to the perpetrators of her.
Without meaning to – Valero ran because she was passionate about it, nothing more – her example encouraged many girls to practice athletics. It was not a sprint but a long-distance race whose strides have served to reach the goal. Have Spanish women reached the podium of sporting equality? One would say that she does, although she doesn't matter. Today it is time to celebrate the lives of those brave women who ran, swam or played sports when what was expected of them was to wash the dishes in the kitchen.
