Raquetistas

This book reveals that the history of Basque pelota is built on the basis of an omission: that of the rackets, a modality that spread to all the cities of the state and was also played in Cuba, Brazil and Mexico. Over the course of six consecutive decades, more than a thousand women of various origins, mostly Basques, lived off the ball and gained fame and recognition from it. However, the national projects at stake erased them from the fields and from memory. Through an exhaustive review of documents from the time and some testimonies, Raquetistas reconstructs a sporting scene that is very different from what we are used to, showing that sport was not always a masculine preserve.