By José del Olmo
The Research Center for the History and Statistics of Spanish Football, founded with that name on February 1, 1987, is now called the Spanish Football Academy.
For this reason, the association has launched an internet domain and website (www.academiadelfutbol.es), new associative image and a new shield, designed respectively by Víctor Manuel López Quintero and Manuel Luis Ruiz de Bucesta y Álvarez.
All of this has been published on October 6, 2025, coinciding with the centenary of the birth of Félix Martialay and the tribute ceremony that we offered to him at the Centro Riojano in Madrid in collaboration with the Bances y Valdés Institute of Historical Studies.
The name change is a consequence of a forty-year trajectory in which the Academy today has collected an unparalleled volume of documentation, as well as publications that more than deserve the prestige that is accredited. For this reason, its most prominent members have acquired the status of academics in the field of football.
Since 1987, the institution has dedicated itself to serious and rigorous research into the history of football, its protagonists and its events. It has gone from being a pioneer in this subject to establishing an academic work method, in the classic sense applied in the 18th and 19th centuries.
On the occasion of the 25 years of our association, I had the opportunity to publish in the month of February 2012 in the Football Notebooks (no. 29) five articles glossing the evolution of the then CIHEFE. Since then another thirteen years have passed, and therefore it is necessary to complete those with the brief notes that continue and that serve as a fine-tuning.
Some milestones of recent years
Since it appeared Football Notebooks On July 1, 2009, CIHEFE has continued to advance its mission. The magazine has served to publish very interesting statistics and disseminate episodes in the history of our football that in many cases have overturned the official story and the one established among fans and journalists.
The rigor of CIHEFE’s work led to the well-deserved recognition for Football Notebooks as a scientific research publication within the sports history category. As of 2015 it appears indexed in Dialneta bibliographic portal where Hispanic scientific literature is cited in the field of Humanities, Legal and Social Sciences. Likewise, since that same year, CIHEFE’s digital magazine has also been registered in Latindexwhere data from scientific, technical-professional and cultural journals is disseminated in the area of Latin America, the Caribbean, Portugal and Spain. This recognition made CIHEFE the only entity that acquired such status in the scientific field when addressing the history of Spanish football. Today, publications in Football Notebooks They are a source of information for research into the history and sociology of football in different Spanish and Latin American universities and the published articles are scaled within the academic curricula of the different authors.
One of the most significant contributions of CIHEFE has been the scientific methodology for its research. The most notable case was exposed in the criteria that must be applied to establish the foundation of a club based on a diachronic analysis where historical documents and protohistorical testimonies from the founding period allowed the most complex enigmas to be resolved.
The in-depth review of events in the past, providing appropriate documentation, has made it possible to reveal unknown data and correct or complete versions that the general public handled very lightly. To cite some examples, we have the complete review of the 1904 Spanish Championship, which tradition gives to Athletic Bilbao, but the Organizing Committee proclaimed Español FC de Madrid as champion of that edition. Or the detailed presentation of the Silver Medal in Antwerp 1920, in which Spain defeated Holland in the small final, in a perfectly regulated tournament. Also in Notebooks One of the biggest unknowns in the history of Spanish football was revealed: the origins of Raimundo Saporta, Santiago Bernabeu’s right-hand man and responsible for the organization of the 82 World Cup.
CIHEFE, as of 2015, has become a publishing house specialized in works dedicated to the history of Football. With a catalog with more than 100 publications, the 33 volumes of Félix Martialay currently appear prominently in A History of the Spanish National Teamor the nine of Football in the Civil Waralso by the same author. In addition to the series of Historical Yearbooks by Vicente Martínez Calatrava, as well as the series of works on different regional championships held until 1940 where authors of recognized prestige participated; or the essential Victim of Football in the Civil War by José Ignacio Corcuera, without leaving aside the recent Lexicon of the Spanish Language applied to Soccera linguistic foray by José del Olmo that includes more than 5,000 specific meanings in the world of football recorded in the journalistic field that enrich the Spanish language.
Faithful to one of its objectives since its constitution as a company, to make the results of its investigations available to everyone in an open and free manner, since November 2016 the database of matches of the National League Championship of all national categories has been operating since its first edition, allowing selective queries to be carried out according to the data of interest.
All these advances have been possible thanks to the support of CIHEFE members who support the management of the board of directors chaired by Víctor Martínez Patón, who has held the position since 2013.
Under his direction, events have been organized such as the Félix Martialay Forums, where in its third edition, in 2014, the first Spanish film with a football theme based on its plot could be seen: Clarita and Peladilla in foot-ballby Benito Perojo. The sports newspaper Mark He reported this filmographic recovery seven years in advance to the National Film Archive, which was subsequently in charge of restoring a copy and exhibiting it. Today it is available to all fans on the digital platform of Youtube.
Another project, inspired by an idea of the current president, is to convene an open discussion with a distinguished person in the football field. Juan Ignacio Gallardo, director of the newspaper Markinaugurated the series in 2017 CIHEFE talks to…where it was possible to openly comment on aspects of sports journalism in general, the lines of work followed by the different media, the selection criteria for covers and news.
Since its inception, the media have cited CIHEFE as a reliable source of information. All of this has led to CIHEFE being required by Mark o Digital Freedom to publish series of articles specialized in the history of football for its readers.
There is no doubt that the presence and recognition of CIHEFE is absolute. In fact, numerous Spanish journalism firms, when reviewing episodes from the past of our football, resort to information from articles published in Football Notebooks. Those who deign to cite their main source are always appreciated.
With all this long and fruitful journey, it is fully accredited that from now on CIHEFE is known as the Spanish Football Academy.
