The same author[1] shows us that in Spain the development has been more gradual. The padel experienced great growth in the late 1990s, with the significant increase in facilities, practitioners and licenses. Development in other cities has been driven by important figures from the political, entrepreneurial, sports and journalistic fields.

In 1987, the Spanish association of padel was created thanks to Corcha Galaters, Pedro Ballvé and Rafael Silvela. She was responsible for promoting and organizing sport in the country.

Four years later, the International Federation of padel is incorporated with Alegria Artiach as president. The latter was responsible for creating a circuit of international competitions and international game rules.

At national level, a Spanish Federation of padel was created in 1997 and aims to regulate the practice.

Thanks to Priego Quesada[2], we can see the evolution of the number of clubs and licensees in Spain between 1988 and 2011:

It is clear that in a little over 20 years, the number of licensees and clubs has exploded. The biggest evolution took place between 1998 and 2011, we went from about 4 000 licensed to 40 000 (we are talking about licensees and not practitioners), a number multiplied by 10, and about 90 clubs at 600. This represents a sharp increase in just 13 years.

We also obtained some figures thanks to Courel Ibanez[3], on the practice of padel in Spain. The latter was able to carry out a study on the evolution of padel in Spain, and on the typical profile of the player according to age, gender and level of practice. It turns out that there are about 4,3 million practitioners in padel in 2015, or 3 million more than in 2010. 29% of practitioners are women and 32% of licenses belong to women. We must indeed make the distinction between licensee and practitioner. Finally, the majority of players are between 35 and 54 years old.

We see that in Spain, this practice is largely for adults over 30 years, and that practitioners are represented by

[1] SANCHEZ-ALCARAZ MARTINEZ Bernardino Javier, “Historia del padel =History of Padel", Materials for the Historia del Deporte (11 number), 2013

https://www.upo.es/revistas/index.php/materiales_historia_deporte/article/view/800

[2] PRIEGO QUESADA José Ignacio, OLASO MELIS José, LLANA BELLOCH Salvador, PEREZ SORIANO Pedro, GONZALEZ GARCIA Juan Carlos, SANCHIS ALMENARA Mercedes, “Padel : A Quantitative study of the shots and movements in the high-performance ”, Journal of Human Sport and Exercise (8 Vol., No. 4), 2013, pp. 925-931

http://mobiroderic.uv.es/bitstream/handle/10550/36113/095173.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

[3] COUREL IBANEZ Javier, SANCHEZ-ALCARAZ MARTINEZ Bernardino Javier, GARCIA BENITEZ Sergio, ECHEGARAY Martin, “Evolucion del padel en Espana en funcion del Género y edad de los practicantes ”, Cultura, Ciencia y Deporte, flight. 12 (No. 34), 2017, pp. 39-46

http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=163049997005

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.

On the same subject