Quidditch in Spain

The quidditch is a sport created in 2005 in Middlebury, Vermont, United States from the Quidditch of the novels of Harry Potter. It did not get to Spain until the year 2012. Nowadays there are near to 16 teams all over the country.

History

Origins

Quidditch has its roots in the fictional Harry Potter sport of the same name, however to denote the difference, the fictional sport uses the capitalised "Quidditch" whereas the sport played as per the IQA rules uses the uncapitalised "quidditch". The sport was created in 2005 at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont by Xander Manshel and Alex Benepe, who later became the first commissioner of quidditch.[1] It has grown into its own separate and distinct sport after seven[2] publications of rulebooks.[3]

2012 - Quidditch reaches Spain

In 2012 Raquel Carrasco, from Madrid, discovered the IQA World Cup, as well as the International Quidditch Association that coordinated the sport all over the world, so she decided to create his own team, Madrid Lynx. She worked alone until, in 2013, the Barcelona Eagles and the Dementores from A Coruña arrived. There also appeared some small teams, specially near Barcelona and Madrid, but they did not live long.

2014 - First attempt to create the association

At the end of 2013 Barcelona Eagles went out for the first time to compete in Europe and, later, took part in the European Quidditch Cup 2014. The growth of the team was remarkable benefited of the proximity with Europe and of the willing the team had to go abroad. However, Madrid Lynx and Dementores did not follow the same philosophy and closed to their own trainings. It was then when the Barcelona Eagles saw the need to create the Spanish association to be able to actively participaty in the decisions that were decided in European level. Sadly, this project had to be postponed.

2014 - Associació de Quidditch de Catalonia

In autumn 2014 it was announced that an NGB (National Governing Body) would be needed, with its classificatory tournament to attend to the 2015 European Quidditch Cup, which led the Barcelona to again trying the creation of the Spanish NGB. Due to the lack of interest of the other teams of the peninsula and with the creation of two new teams in Catalonia (Wyverns in Barcelona and Nightmare Grims in Tarragona), they decided to create the Associació of Quidditch of Catalonia.

2014-2015 - Expansion

The great growth of the quidditch arrived since autumn of 2014. New teams appeared state, reaching in less than a year to a greater amount of active teams than the majority of countries of Europe. On the first of March it was played the Catalan Cup, won by the Barcelona Eagles classifying to the 2015 European Quidditch Cup.

2015 - Asociación Quidditch España

Seeing the increasing growth of teams and players in the country, Spaniards went back to trying to create the NGB. With the help of the mates from the AQC and with players from all over Spain, they created the statutes and gave form to the board.

July 2015 - European Games

In July 2015 the European Games where hold in Sarteano, Italy. In this tournament both Catalonia and Spain took part, finishing in the 7th and 9th place respectively and serving as a window to show the world the state of the quidditch in the country.

September 2015 - Officially in the IQA

In the September 2015th congress meeting of the IQA Catalonia was promote to member league and Spain was officially declared a developing league, waiting to the Spanish Cup to be officially recognized as a member league.

October 2015 and future - AQE and the AQC tournaments

October has been an active month regarding official news. On 19 October it was announced that the first Spanish Cup will be held celebrate in Rivas-Vaciamadrid in February 2016 and in October 20 it was announced the collaboration of the AQC and the AQE to celebrate the first edition of the Regional Cup, where will play between regional selections in the 12the December in Barcelona .[4]

Teams

Associació de Quidditch de Catalunya

Aragon

Catalonia

Asociación Quidditch España

Andalucia

Community of Madrid

Valencian community

Basque Country

Galicia

Tournaments

AQC's tournaments

Copa Catalana
Year Host Champion Score Runner-up
2015 Barcelona
Barcelona		 Barcelona
Barcelona Eagles		 130-70* Tarragona
Nightmare Grims

AQE's tournaments

Spanish Cup
Year Host Champion Score Runner-up
2016 Rivas-Vaciamadrid
Rivas-Vaciamadrid, Madrid

AQC+AQE tournaments

Cup of Regions
Year Host Champion Score Runner-up
2015 Barcelona
Barcelona

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, February 11, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.