The beginning

The Comesaña Sporting Club was born simultaneously to Galician athletics itself. It was founded in 1915, exactly the same year of the first meeting held in Vigo and just one before the competition later known as Galician Championships (the Galician Federation of Athletics was founded in 1921). Nowadays, the Comesaña Sporting Club is the doyen of Galician athletics, the 6th older in Spain, only to be preceded by Catalan and Vasque clubs —both the North-Eastern and the Northern Spanish regions were the pioneers of sports, among other cultural and social avances, in Spain.

The athletics club was named after a Southern Vigo area, San Andrés de Comesaña. Both its first athletes, and most of its current support, come from this neighbourhood.

Comesaña S.C. in 1921, the first photograph

Our first success came in 1921: Guillermo Moreira Araujo got the golden medal in 400m in the Spanish Championships. He was the first Galician to obtain such a nacional title, and the only athlete from Vigo who manage to confront the numerous foreign participants in the ancient track in Coya (Vigo). Just a mouth earlier, in September, our 4×100m relays team had risen Galician champion in the same track.

«The Finnish»

1921 was to be the beginning of a large series of 5 victories in the Galician Championships in 1921, 1924, 1928, 1929 and 1930, with Eusebio Freiría and Manuel Amigo being 3th and 4th individually. This team was known as the Finnish, because this people were the worldwide dominants in long distances (in the same way as today we would say of the athletes from Kenya).

Four of this team victories were to be completed by individual ones: in 1924 Álvaro Fernández and in 1928, 1929, 1930 Cándido Fernández, who also won in 1931.

Cándido Fernández was the outstanding figure in the club, and in Galician athletics, in the 1920’s. He held 7 Galician records: 400m, 800m, 1500m and 5000m. In these events, he crossed the finishing line among the 15 first in all the editions of the Galician Championships of the time (1924, 1925, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931). He won in the single-sessioned 1924 and 1925 (when there was no 800m event), and 1928.

Other Galician champions of our club in the pre-Civil War period were: Guillermo Moreira (5000m in 1924), and Benito Fernández (5000m in 1929, the 8th Championships in Balaidos, and 10000m in 1930).

In this period, our athletes beat 9 Galician records. The aforementioned Cándido Fernández: 400m: 1:00 (9/14/1924), 59,0 (6/9/1929); 800m: 2:16 (9/14/1924), 2:08,0 (7/6/1930); 1500m: 4:28,0 (9/14/1924); 5000m: 18:16,0 (9/13/1925), 16:27,0 (6/22/1930). Benito Fernández 5000m: 17:55 (6/9/1929); 10000m: 38:03,0 (6/29/1930).
Notes:
– All these records were beaten in the Galician Championships, except for Cándido Fernández’s 2:08,0 in 1930 (in the Spanish Championships), since there were only a few meetings in a season.
– The results were then given in fifth of a second.

The new «Finnish»

After the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the Comesaña Sporting Club won more Galician Cross-Country Championships in 1947 and 1949, preceded by individual victories by Luis Ramilo in 1945 and 1948. We thus reached, together with the 5 successes of the previous period, 7 collective triumphs.

One of the CSC teams winning the Galician Cross-Country Championships in the 1940’s. The second on the left is Luis Ramilo.

Luis Ramilo also won 4 golds in track competition: 10000m in 1944, 1500m and 5000m in 1945, and 1500m in 1946. Other of our Galician champions in the 1940’s were: A. Melín in javelin throw (1945), Leiras in hammer throw (1945), Alberto Soliño in 100m and 200m (1946), A. Fernández in 5000m (1946).

Regarding to Galician records, our athletes beat 9 again. Luis Ramilo in 3000m (9:40,0 7/8/1945) and 10000m (33:50 7/31/1944). Carlos Cendón in 1000m (2:55,1 6/6/1946). Alberto Soliño in 110m hurdles (16,7 9/7/1947). And, the best showcase for a club, the relay records: 4×800m (9:31,4 10/28/1945 with José Mirás, Álvaro Fernández, Guillermo Garrido, Luis Ramilo, and 9:10,8 12/9/1945 with Carlos Cendón, José Mirás, Guillermo Garrido, Luis Ramilo), 4×1500m (19:47,2 with Luis Ramilo, Álvaro Fernández, José Mirás, Guillermo Garrido and 19:18,2 12/9/1945 with Álvaro Fernández, José Mirás, Guillermo Garrido, Luis Ramilo).

To be continued …