Chess Where I lived. Ep. 4: Spain. The Cradle Of Modern Chess
Hello Ladies and Gentlemen,
The fourth episode of the series "Chess Where I Lived" is finally here. Today I will tell you more about Spain, its notable players, and its rich chess history. My time there was unfortunately not the longest, only about 6 months in the middle of 2019. Nevertheless, it has a special place in my heart for many different reasons. Before continuing, I feel the need to explain that I did not exactly live in continental Spain, but actually in the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, located in an archipelago near the African coast. Therefore, although it belongs to the country, the place has many cultural and historical differences compared to traditional Spain, and this must be considered.
However, since I have the feeling that a text about "Chess In The Canary Islands" would not have more than a few lines, I decided that limiting myself only to the archipelago would be too little for my taste. Besides, I have obviously visited and loved the famous cities of Madrid and Barcelona, so my tribute will be to the country as a whole.
All my avid readers probably already know how these texts are organized, so I apologize for repeating it. But for those who are new here or reading this as the first of the series, I will explain again how they are structured. Basically, first I give some information about famous players who have contributed to chess in the country and have eternalized their names in national and world chess. After that, I also give some personal opinions about how I felt regarding the popularity of chess there. The five main topics are:
- A historical player
- The GOAT
- My favorite
- A curious fact
- My personal perspective
So please grab your paella, your vino tinto, and let us dive together into the world of Spanish secular chess history.
1) A historical player: Ruy López de Segura
Rodrigo "Ruy" López de Segura, born in Zafra in around 1530 (yes, so long ago that the exact date is not known), is perhaps the most famous Spanish player of all time. I think everyone who has been playing chess for more than a few months has probably heard of this name and knows what I am talking about, so I will not go too deep into his famous opening (1. e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5), but in case you are a beginner, this sequence of moves is called the "Ruy Lopez Opening", sometimes also called "The Spanish Opening".
This fact alone should be more than enough to justify why I have chosen him to represent the historical player of Spain, but in order to go a bit further than what everyone knows, I will happily tell you more about this extremely important figure in world chess history.
Besides being a very strong player, Ruy López was also an author and a Catholic priest. His book "Libro de la invención liberal y Arte del juego del Axedrez" was one of the first books about modern chess in Europe. López was also esteemed for his ability at blindfold chess, although the reports about it are imprecise.
His legacy is still alive almost 500 years later. Ruy López made great contributions to chess opening theory, including not only the line named after him but also the almost equally famous "King's Gambit". His analysis of this line in particular went far beyond earlier writings of the time, leading many to call him "the father of opening theory".
He was also the strongest player in Spain, and possibly in all of Europe, for about twenty years, since at that time the best players of modern-rules chess lived in Italy and the Iberian Peninsula. At his peak, López is said to have easily defeated the most skilled Italians, including Paolo Boi, one of his greatest rivals. That could have earned him the title of world champion, but such a title did not exist until the late nineteenth century. However, this doesn't diminish his importance in the chess scene then and now.
The documentation is not precise, but Ruy López died around 1580, probably in Lima, Peru, at the age of about 50.
2) The GOAT: Francisco Vallejo Pons
Francisco "Paco" Vallejo Pons was born on August 21, 1982, in Es Castell, Menorca. Unlike the first three countries in this series, the best player of all time in Spain is not so obvious, so I decided to choose my favorite among the "contenders" and will make some honorable mentions later in this text. Still, he is certainly one of the strongest.
Paco Vallejo is a five-time Spanish Chess Champion, winning them between 2006 and 2016, and won the U18 World Youth Chess Championship in 2000, ahead of the famous Cuban-American player Leinier Domínguez Pérez. He was also runner-up at the U10 and U12 World Chess Championships in 1991 and 1993 respectively, proving that his talent for the game began at a very young age.
He earned his International Master title in 1996. Three years later, in 1999, he became a Grandmaster at the age of 16 years and 9 months, being the youngest Spanish player ever to achieve the GM title. His peak FIDE rating was 2724, reached in July 2011, which earned him the honorable and unofficial title of "Super Grandmaster", as those who have broken the 2700 barrier are popularly called. But his best world ranking was actually in 2005, when he was ranked 18th.
One of Vallejo's most famous games was played at the Linares tournament in 2006, against the legendary Veselin Topalov, who is known to be the opponent of many famous players' immortal games, so there would be no reason to be different here. Vallejo was also Topalov's trainer in his strategic preparation for the 2006 World Chess Championship.
In 2012, he announced his retirement from competitive chess, but since then he has made several appearances in tournaments and returned to chess some time later. To the delight of Spanish chess fans, it can be said that he is still an active player today, although no longer in his prime.
As promised, I cannot forget to mention some other Spanish players who could also be considered contenders for the GOAT title, such as David "El Niño" Antón Guijarro and Alexei Shirov, who had a peak rating of 2755 and was ranked #2 in the world. However, since he was neither born in Spain nor represented the country during his entire career, I decided to choose another.
3) My favorite: Rey Enigma
Well, we can say that I don't know who my favorite player from Spain is. Not because I haven't decided, but because his true identity remains a mystery to this day. I am not even sure if he is really Spanish, but he lives there and speaks the language. If you don't know him, I leave the link to his YouTube channel below. It is in Spanish, but I think you can still watch and have fun with some of his games.
What I can say about Rey Enigma is that he is a very charismatic player, so named because he is extremely good at chess, skilled enough to call himself the Spanish word for "king," and at the same time a mysterious guy who wears a full-body checkered spandex suit whenever he appears in public.
Enigma started playing blitz games in the park in Madrid, offering 100 euros to anyone who could beat him, and he has been posting videos of himself doing so since early 2021. He even quit his job to focus on being a masked chess guy, which has really worked for him. His videos exploded on TikTok and YouTube during the pandemic, when chess popularity boomed around the world. While he is not a rated player, he has held his own against several Grandmaster and International Master level players. Hikaru Nakamura speculated that Enigma would probably be rated around a very respectable 2400 ELO.
He has played against many notable players such as Karpov, Giri, Anna Cramling, Caruana, Nakamura, Carlsen, and Wesley So, beating many of them in blitz over-the-board games.
According to him, only eight people know his real identity. In an interview with the Spanish newspaper SUR, he said: "There have been times when I've been with friends who have shown me videos of Rey Enigma and I've had to act as if it were the first time I'd seen him”. I found it very funny because he is almost like Superman or Batman in that aspect.
Since I like to follow foreign chess YouTube channels to keep my language skills sharp, be it in Portuguese, German, or in this case Spanish, Rey Enigma has a special place in my heart, enough to be chosen as my favorite in Spain.
4) A curious fact: Artur Pomar, the prodigy used and ruined by a dictatorship.
Artur (or Arturo) Pomar Salamanca was born in Palma de Mallorca on September 1, 1931. He was the first Spanish player to be awarded the title of Grandmaster, in 1962, and was a seven-time national champion, winning the titles between 1946 and 1966. He played for Spain in twelve consecutive Chess Olympiads from 1958 to 1980 and won the individual bronze medal in Leipzig in 1960.
Hailed as a chess prodigy, Pomar won the Balearic Islands Championship at the very early age of 11. At the time, he was being compared to names like Paul Morphy, José Raúl Capablanca, and Samuel Reshevsky.
World Champion Alexander Alekhine spent some time in Spain after World War II and took an interest in the young talent, giving him a series of special chess lessons. During the Gijón tournament in 1944, when he was only 12, Pomar outplayed Alekhine in an endgame and reached a theoretically winning position. However, some inaccuracies allowed Alekhine to draw in a game that lasted over 70 moves.
So much talent did not go unnoticed and was soon used as a propaganda tool by the Spanish dictator General Franco. Franco came to meet him at his residence, El Pardo, while the press made the teenager an early star. Artur, the Catalan version of his original name, had to be changed to Arturo, the Spanish version, precisely because of the dictatorship.
Over the years, however, he lost social relevance and was neglected by those who had supported him, being later abandoned when he no longer served the regime’s purpose. It is widely believed that the pressure to represent Spain and the "greatness" of the regime during his childhood probably affected him psychologically and prevented him from reaching higher levels.
As an adult, Pomar had to take unpaid leave from his job as a postal official to compete in international tournaments, which he attended without financial or technical support. As a result, he never received the training needed to reach higher levels. Nevertheless, he played high-level games and won against some of the best, even drawing against Bobby Fischer in Stockholm. Exhausted by constant travel, games, and exhibitions, he began to suffer from a degenerative disease, with memory loss and confusion.
Pomar died in Barcelona on May 26, 2016, at the age of 84.
5) My personal perspective
As I wrote at the beginning of this text, the place where I have lived is not exactly in what people usually think of as Spain, so it is hard for me to judge too much about the popularity of chess there. What I can say, however, is that the sport is taken seriously and with respect by most of the people I have had the chance to talk to about it. Unlike in other countries, a chess player in Spain seems to be someone who is generally regarded as deserving of respect and admiration.
Perhaps the tradition of the country contributes to this vision, as the Spanish people mostly have a heritage and a legacy to preserve. As mentioned in the title of this article, Spain is the cradle of modern chess, even contributing to the development of the rules we know today. Besides the already mentioned Ruy López, I also feel the need to mention Luis Ramírez de Lucena, one of his predecessors and responsible for the study and development of many patterns still known nowadays, such as the famous "Lucena Bridge Position".
While my enthusiasm for chess had already been revived during my stay in Spain, I must admit that most of my friends were not so interested in the game, so I had to go alone to the "Club De Ajedrez Fundación La Caja", where I finally met people who were as passionate about the game as I was. As a general feeling, I can say that for me it is almost a pity and an injustice that Spain has never had a World Chess Champion, because I believe that a country with so much history, tradition, and great players certainly deserves to be awarded it.
While Lucena and Ruy López were certainly among the best in their time; Pomar had a great potential that was not realized; Paco Vallejo has always represented the country very well among the elite; and Rey Enigma does a great job in spreading and promoting the game, I think that Spain can and will one day have a true official World Champion, and I believe this would be a correction of a historical mistake that the chess gods have made with this beautiful country.
Special thanks to my Mallorcan friend @llsu for helping me with this text, especially for suggesting the topic of Artur Pomar.
Postscript:
[As spoiled in my last text, the piece that represents Spain in chess is the knight. I think the reason for this should be obvious, but in case you haven't guessed, it refers to the most famous knight the world has ever heard of, or rather, read about. I am talking about "Don Quijote de La Mancha", the protagonist of the second most-sold book in history, only after the Holy Bible. If you have never read this book, I highly recommend that you give it a chance.
It is certainly one of my favorites. His adventures with his loyal squire Sancho Panza and his horse Rocinante are interesting, exciting, and funny. The book had a great influence on the literary community, as evidenced by direct references in other famous literary works such as "The Three Musketeers"].
