UNITED BY SPORT SINCE 1933

Real Club Jolaseta celebrated the 75^th anniversary of its foundation as a sports club, with a myriad of activities and a commemorative gala. On 27 March, King Juan Carlos I held a private audience for the Club’s Management Board at the Zarzuela Palace. He recalled being named an Honorary Member in 1969, when he was still a Prince, and when the Count of Barcelona, the monarch’s fame, granted the club royal status in 1943.

The first Guecho Women’s International Trophy, counting for the WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) circuit and with $25,000 in prizes, was held for the first time. The tournament, now called the Getxo international Tennis Tournament, would become the Basque Country’s leading tennis event and has highlighted the popularity of the women’s sport in Jolaseta since the 1990s. Jolaseta still hosts the Getxo International Tennis Tournament, that has had a men’s category since 2011.

The first padel tennis court was built at Jolaseta. It was one of the first in the whole of Spain and the first club championships began to be held. It quickly became established as one of the Club’s leading sports. Jolaseta began to take part in the Spanish Championships in the First Division, the category where it regularly appeared until the year 2000. In 1996, the Basque Country International Championship-Julio Alegria Cup was launched in 1996 and was the forerunner of the Padel Pro Tour (PPT), which would come to Jolaseta in 2006.

The first Jolaseta Annual Festival was held. It is the Club’s most important event and two thousand members gather at the premises and take part in sports, social and leisure activities from Friday to Sunday at the start of September. It has been held year after since then up until the present. In 2018, the Club celebrated the 40^th anniversary of its festival, one of the Real Club Jolaseta’s great fixtures.

Sociedad Campos de Sport de Jolaseta as the club was then known began to run the land of Sociedad de Neguri club, which had had the magnificent social foresight to reserve part of its properties for playing sports. The land consisted of two cement tennis court, a roller-skating court, a building for leisure activities, along with an enclosed football pitch with stands used by Athletic Club de Bilbao and Arenas Club de Guecho.

On 22 March 1933, the founding members drafted the first Membership Rules & Regulations for Sociedad Campos de Sport de Jolaseta. The first Management Board was formed and the Sociedad Deportiva Jolaseta was established as regards its sporting and regulatory aspects. The tennis courts were improved to host international championships, the new club building with a bar-restaurant was built and work began on setting up a field hockey team. In 1943, Don Juan de Borbón, granted the Club royal status with the right to use the term “Real” and it began to be known as the Real Club Jolaseta.

The field hockey first team, after adapting the Club’s pitch to the standard measurements, would start out in Spanish hockey’s first division and also made it to the 1944 final of the Spanish Championship. Since then, Jolaseta has always been a stalwart of the men and women’s national divisions and championships, both in the top and lower tiers.

Jaime Allende was the first to take part in the Olympic Games as a member of the Spanish field hockey team at London 1948. He would later be followed by Rafael Egusquiza (Rome 1960 60), Juan Carlos Migoya (Rome 1960), Jaime Echevarría (Tokyo 1964), Julio Solaun (Tokyo 1964 and Mexico 1968), Rafael Camiña (Mexico 1968), Jorge Camiña (Munich ’1972), Agustín Churruca (Munich 1972 and Montreal 1976), Rocío Ybarra (Athens 2004, Beijing 2008 and Rio 2016) and María López de Eguilaz (Beijing 2008 and Río 2016)

The Club had a new roller hockey rink and Jolaseta became the finest example of the roller sport in Vizcaya. It won the local championships and regularly went to championships in Spain. In 1977, Jolaseta was promoted to the Roller Hockey First Division and in 1981, the top-tier division, when it made history as it was the first Basque team to do so. In 2000, on the cusp of the century, the new sports centre was opened, where Jolaseta won several Liga Norte [Northern League] tiles and two seasons in the National Division.