Ciclista Foot–Ball Club
We present to you the shield of the only club to win a Spanish national football championship, whose emblem, to date, was still unknown. A club that besides is our club, the Txuri-Urdin (The White and Blue).
History
Our club had been playing matches under the name of San Sebastián Foot-Ball Club since 1905. It used to wear a white shirt, blue shorts and the initials of the city (“SS”) embroidered in blue on the chest.
The San Sebastián Recreation Club —currently Real Club de Tenis de San Sebastián [Royal Tennis Club of San Sebastián]— was already a Lawn-Tennis club that has its foot-ball section and even got to participate in the 1905 Spanish Championship (Cup). The club dressed in green and yellow.
Unconcerned by bureaucratic issues, the San Sebastián Foot-Ball Club keeps growing. At the end of 1908 they realized that they couldn’t participate in the 1909 Championship as they did not comply with the requirement of having been registered in the Civil Government for at least one year.
To solve the problem, they suggested the Club Ciclista de San Sebastián, which did meet the requirement, merging both entities, maintaining the registration of the Club Ciclista but changing the name of the new entity.
This is how on November 29th, 1908 the Ciclista Foot-Ball Club was born. In this union of interests, the Ciclista contributes its registration and the Foot-ball Club its income. Foot-ball was already beginning to become more popular as a sport.
Image: GipuzkoaKultura
The Shield
On February 21st, 1909, the famous and spectacular Carnival parade of those years at the beginning of the century was celebrated. Secondly, on the parade, the so–called “Cycling Caravan, a group with decorated machines presented by the ‘Ciclista Foot-Ball Club de San Sebastián’”.
Pedaling and in the lead we can recognize Mariano Lacort and Txomin Arrillaga —soon to be champions— carrying the emblem with the two intertwined ‘C’s and the ‘F’ that form the “CFC” monogram. The monogram ("CFC") represents the initials of the Ciclista Foot-Ball Club, a name that we also want to claim as the true name of the Cup champion instead of that of the Club Ciclista de San Sebastián, to which it is erroneously attributed.
The one on the Cyclist Caravan float is, to date, the only image of the Ciclista Foot-Ball Club shield that we know of. A reproduction of the original reference, made by an amateur, and from which we propose its reconstruction, recovery and vindication.
The design of the two ‘C’s in the starting image is recognizable in other shields of the time, but not the ‘F’, notably unbalanced in its finishes, visibly exaggerated in the upper part and non–existent in the lower part.
At the time when many of our teams were founded, shields that contained or were made up of monograms were very common. Some have lasted, others have subsequently been recovered or reinterpreted and there are also recent creations.
At first we tried to reconstruct our monogram "in the style" of some shields of the time, shortly after we changed our mind and thought that it was more interesting to follow what we consider to be an interpretation of the original image... and we went with it.
Txuri–Urdin since 1905
The Ciclista Foot-Ball Club began playing with the colors of the San Sebastián Foot-Ball Club: white jersey with the shield in the form of a monogram (“iniciales en el pecho” [“initials on the chest”]) embroidered in blue and blue pants.
In March 1909 the team changed its jersey to the one we know today. The first match as Txuri–Urdin (Blue and White) was played on March 7th that year at the Atotxa Velodrome against Racing Club de Irún.
It is important to point out that precisely the triumph of the Ciclista Foot-Ball Club in the 1909 Cup is what gave La Real the right in 1928 to be one of the ten founding members and to participate in the first League Championship, in fact it has always been understood that it was its continuation.
The creation of the Sociedad de Foot-Ball was a consequence of the differences between cyclists and foot-ball players. Those who had joined together eleven months earlier are now separating. Players and managers of the foot-ball section will follow in the new society.
In addition to the Ciclista Foot–Ball Club monogram itself, the work process "gifted" us the discovery of those of the San Sebastián Recreation Club and San Sebastián Foot–Ball Club.
The San Sebastián Foot–Ball Club monogram could presumably be the one shown on the flag of La Real shield since its foundation as a Foot–Ball Society in 1909.
After the appearance of the image of the Cycling Caravan, we hope that new photos and/or documents will appear that will allow us to know more about the club of origin of La Real. We opened this new space, which in its initial version goes behind the Twitter thread, but which we will update and grow.
It would be convenient for both fans and the club —as with the 1909 Cup title— to make this shield our own, incorporating it into our story and the history of La Real.