Héroes sobre ruedas. El Tour de Francia visto desde España durante las décadas de 1920 y 1930: fatalismo, nación y masculinidad

Abstract

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Tour de France had the status of being the toughest and most important cycling event in the world. In these years, the Spanish press insisted on the idea that the cyclists who competed in the race not only struggle to win the competition; they did it also for the honor of the nation and to demonstrate the value of national masculinity to the rest of the world. However, as the successes of the Spanish cyclists were not usual, the newspapers feel the necessity to justify this situation. They did it by appealing to persistent bad luck and opposition from the organization. Through newspapers, this article analyzes the way in which mass media explained the lack of victories of the Spanish representatives in the Tour of France. To do that, they used similar ideas than the applied to justify the defeats of the men’s national football team. The reason why they tried so hard to justify the absence of triumphs was because it was understood that the national dignity and virility of Spanish men were at stake, so the justification had to be credible, plausible and furthermore, had to encourage the patriotic sentiment and national pride.