The Spanish League or LFP (Liga de Fútbol Profesional 'Professional Football League'), one of the most important domestic competitions in Europe, is composed by very competitive teams and some of the finest football players in the world. Its origins date back to the 20s. After the brilliant participation of the Spanish national team in the Olympic tournament held in Antwerpen (Belgium), there was a football fever in Spain and the fans were eager for a competition better and longer than the Cup (too short) and the different regional championships (too local). Thus, a new idea arose to create a tournament based on regularity, so that all teams could play against each other, home and away.

In 1929, the Spanish Football Federation reached an agreement with the most powerful teams of the country to create the National League Championship (Campeonato Nacional de Liga), originally divided in two levels with ten team each. The initial First Division (Primera División) of Spanish football was composed in this seminal 1929 season by the following teams: Athletic Club de Bilbao, Real Madrid CF, FC Barcelona, Arenas Club (Guecho), Real Unión Club (Irún), Real Sociedad de Fútbol (San Sebastián), RCD Español (Barcelona), Athletic Club de Madrid, CD Europa (Barcelona), and Real Racing Club de Santander. The Second Division included Sevilla FC, Iberia SD (Zaragoza), CD Alavés (Vitoria), Real Sporting de Gijón, Valencia FC, Real Betis Balompié (Sevilla), Real Oviedo FC, RC Deportivo de La Coruña, RC Celta (Vigo), and Racing Club de Madrid. It didn't take longer until the Spanish League grew up in popularity and replaced the traditional Cup tournament as the most important domestic competition in Spain.

NOTES

• The main information sources for older editions of the tournament are the archives of the following Spanish newspapers: ABC (1902-), El Mundo Deportivo (1941-), Marca (1942-), As (1967-). From 1985 on, when I started collecting my first statistics on paper, then with an Olivetti typewriter and finally using WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS in an IBM computer (sweet old days...), scores and statistics are registered "on real time."

• For visual convenience, from season 1985-86 on the scores in the crosstable are marked in three colors: black (home team wins), green (ties) and red (home team defeats).