The Football Pools Were Born in Santander

Have you ever wondered where the football pools came from?

So have we — and this is the story.

The Spanish football pools — the quiniela — were born in Santander. That's right: that much-loved fixture of Spanish football culture was invented in a bar called "La Callealtera" in Santander in 1929. Curiously, that same year saw the first edition of the Spanish First Division, contested by just ten clubs.

The story is genuinely remarkable. It all began in a humble fishermen's tavern where young locals played football in the inner courtyard and cockfights were also held. Manuel González Lavín, one of the brothers who ran the bar — also known as Casa Sota — is credited with the invention of this system so deeply embedded in Spanish popular culture.

At the time, some customers would bet on their Sunday coffee by trying to predict match results, which gradually became a routine and then a regular fixture at "La Callealtera". One participant had the idea of putting together a kitty that would go to whoever came closest to the week's results, which brought ever more people flocking to the bar. By the end of the season, around a hundred people were taking part in the quiniela every week.

The quiniela — which originated in Santander — was initially known as the "Football Purse", because the money collected was kept in a bag and handed entirely to the winner. A committee was formed and Manuel González drew up a rulebook to codify every norm and instruction. After all the matches had been played, the committee would log the correct predictions in a lengthy process that could take upwards of ten hours. Remarkably, the bar received no cut — everything went to the winners.

The Cantabrian bar's initiative drew interest from further afield, mostly from Racing supporters, and delegations arrived from various Spanish cities to learn about the new system. At the time, women rarely frequented that kind of establishment as much as men, but they began coming into the bar to fill in their coupons and try their luck.

Such large sums began to change hands that the quiniela started paying tax to the Treasury just two years after it was born, in 1931. In those times of hardship, the quiniela offered genuine hope and excitement to the population — everyone wanted to fill one in and take their chance. The naming was a complex affair: it began life as the "Football Purse", but that never caught on in popular parlance; it was later called the "Quíntuple", since only five matches were played each round, before the name eventually evolved into the familiar "Quiniela".

Only the Civil War managed to interrupt the quiniela — a fixture born of a simple idea in a humble local bar, which went on to become hope and excitement for a whole population.

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