I started playing jokingly when I was five and competing when I was eight.” Pepita Ferrer (Barcelona 1938 - Tarragona 1993) was a chess prodigy, then eight-time Spanish champion, between 1961 and 1976, and, above all, the first Spanish chess player with the title of International Master, brilliantly obtained in 1974. .
Born in Poble Sec, she was captivated by the elegance of the pieces and the sometimes slow, sometimes frenetic movements of the games her father played in a bar near his mechanical workshop. The figure of the horse especially and its elegant and eccentric movement ended up making little Pepita fall in love with her, and before turning to chess she also showed good manners playing soccer, another of her great childhood hobbies.
Those who knew her and saw her compete in Spanish and international tournaments remember an aggressive, non-conservative chess player who liked to pose battles that went beyond the most studied paths. Pepita Ferrer had to fight on several fronts, at the same time in her life, and her chess career would deserve greater remembrance beyond the Torreforta neighborhood, where she earned the admiration of its inhabitants.
Firstly, she was a notable player in an unashamedly sexist world and era, where she had to assert herself with energy. “She was a very advanced woman by then,” explains Montserrat Recasens, director of the Torreforta municipal library, which bears the name of Pepita Ferrer. She smoked and wore pants in times of widespread social prejudice that did not usually forgive dissent.
Secondly, he had to carry out his chess activity with hardly any support. He often competed against rivals who had advisors and analysts and, in addition, his constant travel prevented him from holding a stable job. For years he had to take advantage of periods of greater freedom to distribute advertising leaflets as a means of subsistence. Finally, she had to battle cancer that led to her premature death at age 54.
“She was above all a chess teacher, she mastered the theory like no one else, and all the styles,” recalls Fernando Arrechea Larrea, a prominent chess player of those times. In interviews with the Diario Español de Tarragona, where Ferrer appeared more than once on the cover, he insisted on the lack of recognition, even after competing in chess Olympics, such as the one in Haifa, in 1976, when he captained the team that reached the bronze medal for Spain (the men's team finished ninth) and then, in the recount of the successes of Spanish sport at the end of the year carried out by Spanish Television, "they didn't even remember us, I don't have words to express it," he denounced . Her actions like the aforementioned barely brought her a few letters of congratulations from the Federation and the National Sports Delegation. The subsidies were not even dreamed of.
Pepita Ferrer cited the Soviet (Latvian) Mijaíl Tal, known as the Magician of Riga, as a model on the boards. At the time he was the youngest world champion of all time (1960), Tal stood out for his often surprising, risky play. The one that excited the Catalan champion.
In simultaneous exhibition games, Pepita Ferrer even faced Gari Kasparov, with whom she lost once and drew two, and also with Anatoli Kárpov, with whom she also managed to draw.
Established in Tarragona and already retired from competitions, she taught her knowledge in chess schools and centers and was always, as one of the sources consulted for this report points out, “a woman of strong arms.” If not, she would never have gotten this far.
