A group of British citizens settled in Barcelona on the occasion of the Universal Exhibition of 1888, becoming the sportsmen who implemented in the city the sports practices in vogue in their country. Lawn tennis was not going to be an exception. Although the first rackets are heard in private gardens, the now-defunct Bonanova Velodrome becomes the nerve center of the new sport.
Under the presidency of Ernest Witty, and the support of the British Consulate, in the spring of 1899, the Barcelona Lawn Tennis Club, currently the Real Club de Tenis Barcelona-1899, was founded. Its first headquarters is an interior area on Pau Claris Street, on the corner of Mallorca, where two courts were located.
The acceptance of lawn-tennis was immediate in the city, and in 1903, under the leadership of the club, and together with the Sport Verein Barcelona, ??the Salud Sport Club and the Polo Club Barcelona, ??it was organized, on the courts of Claris Street, the 1st Barcelona International Lawn Tennis Competition. The success was so resounding that Witty promoted the creation of the Lawn-Tennis Association of Catalonia in 1904 and, that same year, registered the entity in the International Lawn Tennis Association, currently the International Tennis Federation.
With the main values ??that the sport of tennis provides such as honesty, rigor, effort, respect for rivals, passion, work, responsibility, strategy, solidarity, and not giving up in search of improvement. Constantly, the entity is unfolding its history with decisions of enormous magnitude.
In the 1920s, with its headquarters established on Ganduxer Street, on the corner of Modolell, the club began its international expansion by organizing major tennis challenges with the most important clubs on the planet, and leading the organization of the World Court Tennis Championships. Covers from 1923, the first world championship of any sporting discipline in the country. It also hosts the debut in our country of a Davis Cup team eliminator, and promotes, in collaboration with the Spanish Olympic Committee, the participation of Spanish athletes in the 1924 Paris Olympic Games.
The possibility of seeing the great stars of the racket live, undoubtedly raises the competitive level of tennis of the entity’s athletes who, in addition, find in the club a second home in which to interact and feel at home. .
A decision of transcendental importance was going to mark the future of the club when, in 1952, under the presidency of Carlos Godó Valls, count of Godó and president of the entity, it was decided to buy the land of the Can Canet de la Riera farmhouse in Sarrià , to erect the new headquarters of the company and abandon the Ganduxer rental land.
It was a brave bet, which had to overcome drawbacks such as the loss of a good number of members who considered the location too far from the city center. But the bet was firm and, to give it even greater emphasis, Carlos Godó Valls decided to inaugurate the new headquarters by creating a great international competition and also providing it with a unique trophy. Although initially the competition was going to be called the President’s Cup, the members of the board of directors were the ones who finally decided that the final name of the competition would be the Conde de Godó Trophy.
The success of the competition was immediate, attracting fans eager to see the world’s best tennis players in action. This stage of ‘rebirth’ of the entity was also marked with the possibility provided by the new and larger headquarters. The traditional festivals of San Juan became a great social festival in the city, and members’ clubs were born who, in addition to practicing their favorite sport and promoting coexistence, promoted cultural events of great success and roots in Barcelona.
In the socio-sports field, the creation of the first Tennis School in the country began to bear fruit. The youngest found in the club’s school an illusion to become great tennis players and emulate the participants in the Conde de Godó Trophy, who were joined by exhibitions of professional tennis players, and in the sixties the great boom of Spanish tennis in the hand of a Davis Cup team made up of Manolo Santana, José Luis Arilla, Juan Gisbert, Juan Manuel Couder and Jaime Bartrolí, as captain. Their victories filled the club’s competition court, which was baptized as the talisman court, thanks to a team that reached the finals of the silver salad bowl competition in 1965 and 1967 and who, in addition, were the catalyst for the great love for this sport in our country.
In a logical progression given that the breeding ground created for years had to bear fruit, great generations of tennis players from the club are also beginning to appear who have captured their names in the most prestigious honor rolls on the planet. With the arrival of professional tennis, RCTB-1899 players such as Andrés Gimeno, Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, Conchita Martínez, Albert Costa, Carlos Moyà, Flavia Pennetta and, especially Rafael Nadal, put the entity in the great showcase of Grand Slam tournaments. .
On February 5, the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona was the venue chosen by the Real Club de Tenis Barcelona-1899 to officially inaugurate the commemorative events of the entity’s 125th Anniversary. In his opening speech, Jordi Cambra, president of the club, expressed the importance of the validity of the values ??that have always defined the entity since its foundation as the main driving force of its trajectory and its future projection: honesty, rigor, effort , respect for rivals, passion, work, responsibility, strategy, solidarity, not giving up seeking constant improvement and, in the times we live in, firmly betting on sustainability.
