“The book you have in your hands is a recognition of the work of women in the field of Valencian pilota, pal de paller of traditional sports, a hallmark of Valencian men and women, which until a few decades ago was considered exclusive to male practice. With this phrase begins Dones i Pilota. Esport, Culture and equality by Helena Paricio and Víctor Agulló. A work published by the Pilot Chair of the University of Valencia that tries to pay tribute to those women who fought and continue to fight to remove that “stigma of being a very masculinized sport” from this native sporting practice, explains Agulló. “Pilot racing is not just a man’s sport,” he says.
This sports sociology professor says that all Valencian families have a hidden history with the pilot. He remembers the stories his aunt told him about how there were women who played, especially during the times of the Republic, and how some even beat the men. “They were brave women who challenged morality and patriarchy,” says the sociologist and co-author of this book.
Precisely, this book reports that the legendary pilota player Genovés “spoke about a couple of women from his town against whom he “had to roll up his sleeves” in order to beat them. Furthermore, few people know that he learned his famous colpeig de manró from Mercedes Bataller, a friend and neighbor of the town who was a great player and that, if she had been born today, she would most certainly be in the elite.”
And the task of Paricio and Agulló is to give visibility to women who, despite having a more invisible role, have contributed to making this sport grow. They indicate that there are about 120 books on pilota cataloged, but that this is the first monograph on women.
However, the book does not look back so much – although it makes special mention of female racket players, women who between 1917 and 1980 dedicated themselves professionally to playing racket, with a large presence in the Basque Country, but with representative Valencian cases. but to the present and the future. Therefore, through interviews, she profiles 17 current players in which they explain their way of understanding the sport. But it doesn’t stop there, it also collects the testimonies of women who have helped the growth of sport from other areas such as crafts, journalism or politics and management.
According to Helena Paricio, specialized in heritage management and associate professor of the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the UV, the players interviewed agree in highlighting what the pilot brings to them: “Sociability, proximity to the public, values ??such as respect and honesty, so lacking in other sports, as well as fun.” Beyond that, the players also share the need to have family support to be able to meet sporting expenses, to travel to competitions, “a help that must be accompanied by institutional support, professionalization and adequate facilities.”
The authors’ idea is to give visibility to these women so that they can be “references” for the girls who are now starting in schools and sports clubs. The explosion of women’s football has shown the importance of new generations having a mirror in which to look at themselves to realize that nothing is impossible.
In fact, the study reflects important progress. It cites data from the Valencian Pilota Federation that indicates that from 2011 to 2021, there went from 20 federation tokens to around 300, a figure that remains the same today. Furthermore, it is noted that this increase has been parallel to “an exponential growth in the participation of girls in the School Jocs with a figure of 659 in 2023.” In this way, we can talk about a current participation of more than 950 school and federated players, of which 15 are professionals.
Some figures, the study points out, “considerable if we take the reference of previous years, but still much lower than the participation of men.” Currently, male participation is 1,680 federated members, of which 50 are professionals, and 2,074 children in the School Jocs.
One of those who began to become interested in piloting after seeing an exhibition at school when she was only seven years old was Joana Martínez. The Tavernes Blanques player explains to La Vanguardia her status, and that of many of her teammates, as a ‘semi-professional’. “There are 12 players with a contract and the rest of us play when they call us to participate in professional championships, while we participate in amateur tournaments.” She explains that not even those who have a contract (which ranges between 500 and 1,000 euros, depending on the number of games and prizes) can make a living from piloting. She is a researcher and is working on her doctoral thesis.
The players, yes, are a bunch, and have come together to demand a whole series of improvements. One that they have already achieved is “being able to play in all the trinquets, something that until a few months ago was not possible. There were spaces that were off-limits to us,” he explains. Now, the next step is to move towards equality in salaries and rewards. In the last one in which she participated, the amounts from the male to the female category had a difference of “thousands of euros.”
Martínez – who plays the sport of raspall, the most common among women – claims the need to move towards equality in this sport and highlights the fundamental importance of introducing pilota through schools, where she began to practice it. As Helena Paricio explains, “it is a sport to which students come under equal conditions, from scratch, since they do not know it previously and that allows for a more egalitarian practice.”
However, the authors highlight in the book that while there are “higher practice rates among women, as well as notable sporting successes, discrimination persists in many areas such as visibility in the media, fewer economic resources and materials, in addition to less practice, especially in the field of competition.
Given this situation, Paricio and Agulló demand that this “social change” that has occurred due to the push of women have greater visibility in the media, in broadcasts and in the Valencian trinquets.
