The first skiers in the Guadarrama mountains
In the early years of the 20th century some of the students at the Institución Libre de Enseñanza (a prestigious experimental educational institution of the time) who used to frequent the –at that time little-known– Sierra de Guadarrama mountains nearby, commissioned a cabinet-maker to fashion some boards measuring 30 cms. wide by 50 cms. long. With these they intended to emulate the feats described by Nansen in his book 'Farthest North', but of course they were unable to slide over the frozen slopes with these rudimentary skis.
In the late 19th century the Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen used wooden boards attached to his footwear in the usual style of his native land of Christiania on his expeditions. He covered a distance of five hundred kilometres over the frozen wastes of Greenland in forty days, and the event was widely reported all over Europe.
At that time, a young Norwegian who was in charge of the family's business in Madrid, the 'Sörensen Yakhelln and Co. Timber Merchants' whose headquarters were in Barum in Christiania, used to acquire raw materials from the Almacenes de la Sociedad Belga company in the pine forests of el Paular, and thus made the acquaintance of the group of hikers from the I.L.E.. When he saw the young men's fruitless attempts at skiing, he started to make skis for his new friends in his warehouses in Calle Argumosa in Madrid.
This group of enthusiasts, which included such illustrious surnames as Amezua, Santos Mata, Torres Campos, Levenfeld, Posadas, the Dupuy de Lome brothers, Medianaveitia, and Girod, among others, were outstanding students of the institution, and lost no time in making use of these original instruments which enabled them to slide over the snow.
On October 20, 1906, the seed was sown for what was to be the first Spanish Alpine Club. They used to meet in Madrid in what to this day is still known as the famous Cervecería Alemana in the Plaza de Santa Ana square, and they contrived to obtain the abandoned roadworkers' cabin, despite its half-demolished, leaky roof, which stood half-way up the road to the mountain pass of Navacerrada. The club soon outgrew the house, and after numerous meetings in their headquarters at the Cervecería Alemana, and the unpleasant incident of the bankruptcy of the bank where the contractor had deposited the two thousand pesetas set aside for the construction of the club headquarters in 1907, a small chalet was finally built and christened with the name of the association: the 'Twenty Club', as this was the number of members who had started out on this undertaking. The following year the club was legally registered, with statutes based on those of the French Alpine Club. King Alfonso XIII accepted the post of honorary president.
Sorensen the Norwegian died in 1910 from fever, aged 32, and that same year the club changed its name to its current title of Club Alpino Español.
1912 saw the celebration of the first skiing competitions, and this event attracted nearly one thousand spectators, a spectacular figure for that time.
The club grew rapidly, and in 1908 there were already 71 members, which increased to 628 in 1916. The initial membership fee was 15 pesetas, and ten pesetas a year thereafter, while women and children were exempt from membership fees.
