Outdoor sports are in fashion

Although football is still king, with 87,600 licenses, the last five years of sports in Galicia have served for sports with less influence in the community to take a step forward and increase the number of their associations. According to the latest data recorded by the Xunta de Galicia, corresponding to 2022 (There are federations that issue annual tables and others by season), surfing, motorcycling, canoeing, tennis and boxing are in the top-5 of those that have grown the most. If, on the other hand, we take into account the number of licenses that have increased, canoeing is in first place, followed by tennis, athletics, paddle tennis and hiking.

The growth of surfing is amazing, from 464 athletes in 2018 to 2071 in the current season. That means 346% more. Thus, from only 464 federation tokens, it grew to 2,071, according to Xunta data, which the federation assures that they have already exceeded close to 2,500.

In this boom, according to Román Díaz, president of Territorial, there are two moments that mark progress: «In 2017, we took a step back, because we abolished training licenses. Only athletes who intended to compete could be in the federation. Later, more people were admitted again. With the pandemic, since the sports permit allowed you to go abroad, the numbers skyrocketed and reached almost four thousand in 2020. We’ve stabilized now, but we’re maintaining that upswing as we continue to pool non-competing athletes.

Of the five specialties that have grown the most in percentage terms, only boxing is trained indoors. For Manolo Planas, the leader of this sport in Galicia, there is still a bigger boom in this practice, but this is not reflected in the number of licenses. “We do not demand that practicing boxers unite. It is a recommendation, but we force only those who compete. By that I mean that there are many more of them than are on record (3,252, with an increase of more than 60% in the last five years). Today, all medium and large cities in Galicia have a boxing hall. And I’m not including fitness boxing franchises and the like. I’m only talking about traditional boxing. When I became president, in 2011, there were sixty licenses. They were exclusive to the contestants. Now they are also processed for recreational boxing. But it is still difficult for people and I would say that only 20% of practitioners are affiliated.

And if in the case of surfing the pandemic was a step forward, badminton has failed. In 2018, there were 8,443 permits, almost a thousand more than a year later. But the breakout happened in 2020, which remained at only 4408. It continued to fall in 2021, and in 2022 it had a spike that lasted through 2022, from 4631. Of course, percentage-wise, it fell 45% in just five years . Contrary to these data, its president Rodrigo Sanjurjo claims that there are 6,800 in 2023, two thousand more than last year. “The reason is that we launched a campaign to license federal schools and it is having success,” he explains. However, the boss, who attributes the decline to the pandemic, claims that while he would like to have more branches, he prefers to enjoy “the competitive quality as it is now”.

Soccer, hunting, basketball, golf and athletics are the activities that are practiced the most

Despite an increase in the number of practitioners and/or allies in some disciplines and a decrease in others, Galicians are still faithful to tradition. Football is still the leader, despite losing almost two thousand licenses in the last five years, which represents barely 2.3% of those it had. With 87,598 files processed, it’s the federation that makes the difference.

In second place in this classification is hunting, which has remained, with almost no changes, close to twenty thousand branches. With fourteen thousand, basketball is the fourth most used sport, and golf is the fifth. Of the main ones, it is the one that has grown the most in the last five years, with an increase of 12.4% to close to twelve thousand practitioners.

At the moment there are three disciplines that have experienced a significant boom: athletics thanks, in part, to a boom in popular racing that has encouraged some fans to join federations; paddle tennis, a relatively new sport that continues to grow; and canoeing, which is the number of licenses that has grown the most in the last five years. This discipline, in which Galicia is a world power, last year issued four thousand licenses more than in 2018 (90%) and amounts to 8239. The increase, according to Freda Bea, its president, can be found in the creation of a license for apprentices, which did not exist until 2021.