Municipal archives Toledo is home to a unique collection of 44 regulations and manuals from the beginning of the 20th century which regulate sports practice. A project which culminates in this month of December and which disseminates fundamental documents to understand the origin … and the regulation of sport in Spain. These are manuals and regulations born around the Infantry Academy and Gymnastics School created in 1919 and which laid the foundations for many sporting disciplines.
The collection is made up of 44 regulations which cover a wide variety of sports such as handball, basketball, volleyball, rugby, mountaineering, hockey, fencing, swimming, tennis, bowling, rope pulling and table tennis.
The Tagus, Environment and Sports councilor indicated that they are “jewels of sports literature which show the importance that Toledo had in the professionalization of sports practice at the beginning of the 20th century in our country”, assured Lozano.
The councilor also highlighted that this initiative is also part of Toledo’s calendar of activities as a European City of Sport, with programming “that has brought sport to all areas and environments, not only in competitions and infrastructures, and which also reaches documentary heritage”.
For his part, Oliver Gutiérrez, technician of the Municipal Archives, highlighted that this virtual exhibition continues a previous exhibition in which the athletic manuals of infantry captains José Hermosa and Ricardo Villalba were digitized, responding to a commitment made with citizens to make accessible this valuable documentary collection that the Archives has.
In this sense, he pointed out that from a technical point of view, the regulations stand out for their practical and didactic nature, since some include detailed illustrations on the execution of the movements of the sport itself, and incorporate leaflets or small extracts intended to be consulted by the judges or referees themselves when practicing sports.
Finally, the exhibition manager highlighted the careful process of digitization page by page, with subsequent processing and optimization of the files, to facilitate their consultation and rapid downloading, thus becoming a resource of great value for researchers, students, sports fans and citizens in general.
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