© Else Beekman
According to the official statistics of sports federations, published every year by the highest sporting body, El Consejo Superior de Deportes, there are fewer than four million registered athletes. This big difference occurs because it does not take into account the number of people who regularly visit the gym, go for a run, or play a paddle game with friends.
Top Ten Recorded Sports
The top ten sports in Spain, given the number of official practitioners registered with the sports federations concerned, in 2019 looked like this:
- Football: 1,095,000
- Basketball: 285,000
- Pursuit: 335,000
- Golf: 269,000
- Mountaineering / mountaineering: 248,000
- Judo: 108,000,000
- Handball: 100,000
- Athletics: 94,000.
- Volleyball: 85,000
- Fall: 75,000
On your own
Athletes who choose to play the sport on their own, and there are a lot of them in Spain, are not included in the official statistics mentioned above and are not included in the top ten. Still, it should. Those who walk or drive regularly on the street will see that the number of runners and cyclists has increased in recent years.
Unorganized popular sports. Football, cycling and swing
Nearly five million Spaniards run regularly; This is five times the number of registered soccer players with the Football Association. This is a huge number, as evidenced by the number of running events that are organized on weekends across the country, on the streets of large cities as well as in small towns. Cycling is another popular sport not included in the statistics. The most important report on cycling, the bicycle measure in Spain, shows that nearly nine million Spaniards use the bike at least weekly. This means that there are more cyclists than registered football players. Cycling is often a weekend sport. Some cyclists prefer the road, others prefer the mountains. Besides running and cycling, swing game is also popular. Although this racquet sport ranks 10th in the list above, with 75,000 scoring with the federation, an estimated 2 million Spaniards regularly play the baseball. Not surprisingly, there would be many. In recent years, a large number of jobs have been created in Spain, often on private land. A good incentive for many Spaniards, who had not previously played the sport, to start this racquet sport.
The real winner
What sport really ranks first in Spain? Is this football, jogging, cycling, or a racket? This is still difficult to determine, because unorganized athletes are not registered and the number of athletes cannot be determined. In the absolute sense, running will be at the top of the list. Football, the king of sports, came second. The numbers of athletes and choice of sport provide insight into society. Fortunately, the real gains are that every day there is more exercise and less sitting.
