La generación perdida del boxeo olímpico español: la frustrada participación en Moscú-1980. [The lost generation of Spanish Olympic boxing: the frustrated participation in Moscow-1980]

The aim of this historiographic research is to recover the facts and circumstances that surrounded Spanish boxing in the 1970s and the conditions that led Spain to decide not to participate in boxing in the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow. The semi-structured interview was used to recover information from eight oral sources and the documentary analysis was used to recover and contrast data from institutional and newspaper collections, also rescuing unpublished content from the personal archives of three boxers of the National Team of the period of study. At the end of the 1970s the economic resources of the Spanish Boxing Federation were reduced. This had consequences on the scholarships of the members of the National Team, on their personal circumstances and on their physical preparation. The older fighters left the national team and there were systematic defeats in the matches prior to the 1980 Games. The diffusion of negative news related to boxing in the press and the repudiation of a social sector towards this sport, were some other conditions for the Spanish boxing to suffer a great deterioration that affected in a local and national way the gyms and places used for its practice and diffusion. These were some of the reasons for the Federation to decide, weeks before the Olympic Games, that the selected fighters would not attend with the rest of the delegation. Those boxers suffered other consequences and external conditions, as a result added to their absence in an Olympic Games.