In the London 2012 Olympic pool, a journalist from the Spanish press moved excitedly in his chair in the stands. He would half get up and rant almost like there was no tomorrow. In the water, Mireia Belmonte swam the final of the 200 butterfly and won silver, her first medal in the Games. An Australian colleague, much more accustomed to recounting hits from his country in the pool, asked the Hispanic informant: "Why do you celebrate so much?" The answer came quickly: "Because it is the first Olympic medal for a woman born in Spain in swimming."
Only eleven years ago this episode but in this time the emergence of women's sport in Spain has been sensational, crowned last Sunday with the universal soccer title.
Although the current process started much earlier. Beginning with those same Games in London, when women stood on the podium 13 times and men 6. Also in Rio de Janeiro, but not in Tokyo, women hung more medals than men (9 to 8). The Mireia Belmonte, Carolina Marín, Lydia Valentín, Ona Carbonell or Ruth Beitia were an impressive knock to enter a new dimension.
Asking for more visibility, demanding more aid, demanding that their specific needs be taken into account, they were obtaining goals.
In the field of collective sports, the harvest of modern times is also very remarkable. This same summer, without going any further, the water polo players led by Miki Oca, who make up a top-flight team, were proclaimed runners-up in the world after losing only in the final to the Netherlands and on penalties. In the last eleven years this team has obtained ten medals. In other words, they are a fixture on the front line, having been European champions three times, Olympic runner-up twice and world champions once. Being capable of regenerating and reinventing itself in this time and with leaders of the stature of Anni Espar, present in all these successes.
In similar terms, we should talk about the women's basketball team, whose most recent achievement is having won silver in the European Championship last June, a tournament in which they returned to the path of victory after a bad year in 2021 that deprived them of be in the 2022 World Cup. So far this century Spain has achieved 14 medals in this discipline, including Europeans (10), World Cups (3) and Olympic Games (1). With players like the already retired Laia Palau, Sílvia Domínguez or Alba Torrens as hooking flags, as references for the following generations, and always showing a steely level of competitiveness.
This role as spearheads is very important because every summer Spain becomes a power in the championships of the lower categories. It happens in basketball and it has happened in soccer, with the world titles under-17, under-20 and absolute, appointments in which the emerging Salma Paralluelo was present.
The successes of the base usually lead to the triumphs of the majors in a reasonable time, although it is not always mathematical since, for example, in the pool there is still no glimpse of what Mireia Belmonte meant. But what is true is that victories usually call for more victories. In the same way that Iniesta idolized Laudrup or Navarro Epi, the players of tomorrow will grow up admiring Aitana Bonmatí, Alexia Putellas, Anni Espar or Alba Torrens.
There is still a long way to go, not so much in terms of the large windows, those that attract attention, normally in summer, a season full of podiums, but on a day-to-day basis. When fall rolls around, the main event lights go out and the various leagues arrive. The infrastructures of the stadiums, pavilions and swimming pools where women compete do not always meet the required minimum.
