We had seen in the exploratory phase that the padel in Spain experienced its first wave of development in the early 1990s. The Spanish Federation of padel was established in 1997 and the following year the practice experienced a big boom in the number of infrastructure, grounds and practitioners. There are currently around 15 fields and 000 million practitioners. This practice has become one of the major sports in Spain, along with football (including futsal).

Le padel has therefore become cultural in Spain. François also shared his feelings with us on this subject " there the difference is cultural, in Spain, for example we have municipal football fields, they have in the residences padel. THE padel is really accessible to everyone in Spain which makes it so popular there."[1]

We then gave the climate argument to Brice during the interview, specifying that the weather was generally better in Spain, and that therefore more outdoor land could be built, and therefore was less expensive, and that thus promoted the development of this practice. This argument had been logically refuted and therefore supported this cultural argument a little more: “ there are also provinces in Spain where the weather is very nice and very hot. You go to Andalusia, in the middle of summer, from April to May, you don't play at 14 p.m., you don't play at 16 p.m., you will start playing at 17 p.m., 18 p.m. I will also give you another example, there are other provinces in Spain where it rains a lot, in particular the Basque country, Bilbao city of 300 inhabitants, there is a center with 000 pitches, and which is not the center of padel, but on the other hand, it's completely indoor »[2].

In summary the padel was able to win in Spain, but not by chance. We could see that the practice experienced a big boom there when the Spanish Federation of padel. The development of a practice in a territory thus requires strong structuring. So the padel has been able to impose itself culturally on Spanish territory.

[1] Page 112: interview with Brice and Jean

[2] Page 86: Victor interview

Franck Binisti

Franck Binisti discovers the padel at the Club des Pyramides in 2009 in the Paris region. Since padel is part of his life. You often see him touring France going to cover the major events of padel French.

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