Sport versus bullfighting: the new civilising sensitivity of regenerationism and its effect on the leisure pursuits of the Spanish at the beginning of the 20th century

Abstract

This article analyzes the influence of the new civilizing sensitivity of the Spanish regenerationists in the introduction of sport, in place of bullfighting, during the first third of the twentieth century. Following the colonial collapse of the late nineteenth century and the subsequent demoralization of the country, the regenerationists saw in physical education and sport a way to reform the broken Spanish population. Sport had arrived in Spain in the mid-nineteenth century by way of the aristocracy and would then spread to the urban middle classes, imbued with the reformist sense of the regenerationists. It came in the form of amateur sport, with values of modernity and a civilizing sensitivity which were diametrically opposed to activities such as bullfighting that had such great support from the Spanish public. Amongst the urban middle classes, sport developed as a kind of amateur practice, used for the formation of a more civilized character and the expression of individuality; on the contrary, amongst the working classes, sport spread primarily in its professional form, by way of mass spectator sports (football and boxing), representing a civilizing spurt in severing the link between entertainment and death which was central to bullfighting.