Opening ceremony (and the day I first met my team mates!) was on August 5th. There was a tournament newsletter and they had an article featuring Team España a couple of days later!
07. August 2000
Ultimate España
There is not a very long history of disc sports in Spain. Most Spaniards
think of a Frisbee as „that plastic thing you bring to the beach". When you
mention Ultimate as a sport, they say „Que?"
Though there are only about 70 ultimate players
currently playing in Spain, it seems that Spanish
Ultimate is finally getting off the ground. This is
the first year that a Spanish Team is competing at
a World level and players have come together
from Barcelona, Madrid, and Gran Canaria to
form the team.
The history of Spanish ultimate starts about 5
years ago when a group of people started playing
in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Canary Islands,
eventually taking the name of Pio Pio. Within 2
months they went to France to participate in the
European championships. But since then, only a
few players have been able to travel to tour-
naments - they are closer to Africa than they are
to mainland Spain. Still, over the years they've
continued to play with the spirit that typifies
Ultimate and have grown to approximately 15
players. They hosted their first beach hat
tournament in March 2000 which gave all the
Canary players a chance to play in a tournament
and left everybody else begging for it to be
repeated annually.
Independently, Barcelona's Patatas Bravas began
playing in the winter of 1998 when the Ultimate
gods conspired to bring several players together
who had all played in other places. After realizing
that nobody would get up before 1 pm on a week-
end, practices were moved to late afternoon and
Ultimate addicts were created. Since then,
the Patatas Bravas have participated in tour-
namets in Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy
and Portugal. The team currently has 25 players
and is comprised of "Catalan/Spanish and"
foreign players. I guess Ultimate is still a bit of a
beach thing in Spain because both Pio Pio and the
Bravas practice on the beach, bare foot, all the
time. The sun in Spain is great, but one of the
drawbacks is its effect on grass fields! The Bravas
also organize a beach hat tournament that was
first hosted in the fall of 1998 and has since
become the infamous last European Outdoor tour-
nament of the year. They're working on bringing in
more women and getting a juniors team started at
a local school to try to raise interest and ensure
that Ultimate will continue.
The internet age helped contribute to the for-
mation of Los Quijotes from Madrid. They began
playing in December of last year after several
requests came to the Bravas and Eurodisc mailing
lists requesting information about ultimate in
Madrid. With 6 names to start with, things
seemed to take off when Juan Carlos, a Madrileño
who learned to play ultimate while studying in
England, took charge of motivating and
organasing. They have not yet participated in any
tournaments and are still in the tenuous stages of
team creation since many members of the initial
group have moved out of Madrid, including Juan
Carlos. Hopefully things will keep moving and
we'll see more ultimate from them in the future.
Finally, and most recently, a team was started in
Tenerife, another of the Canary Islands. A lone
flying Italian initiated a university ultimate course
last spring in which a group of about 15 students
participated. The first real competition between
two Spanish teams has also evolved out of this
effort with the 2 Canary Island teams traveling to
play against each other a few times and a final
competition organized at the end of the course.
The University de La Laguna, where they also
have the luxury of grass fields, will offer a year-
long course again in the upcoming academic
year. It looks like a lot is happening quickly with
Ultimate in Tenerife!
The Spanish team at WUGC 2000 is comprised of
4 players from Gran Canaria, 1 player from
Madrid, and 14 players from Barcelona. With so
few players in the entire country, the selection
process essentially boiled down to those who
were interested, eligible, could afford it, and were
willing to commit to playing and having fun.
Maybe not the most stringent criteria, but hey, it's
a start! There are 3 women playing with the team
since there are not enough women (yet) to form a
mixed or women's team. Since this is the first time
Spain is participating, we really don't know what to
expect. Our main goal is to have as much fun as
possible and to play as hard as we can. Apart from
that, we want to find out what diving on the grass
is all about, see how fast we can run when not in
15 centimeters of sand, and see if it's possible to
avoid blisters with those cleats we're supposed to
wear. No matter what, we're all ready and really
excited to be here! Kaleen Moriarty, Team España
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