Football and The Romans
November 10, 2008
If you’ve ever wondered why Sevilla’s second football team is called Betis, then this is for you. Recently an online magazine called Subbética News started running our themed Taste of Garlic mini series. I had never heard of Subbética anything before, but soon recognised the ‘bética’ part, and discovered that La Subbética is a comarca (which you might translate as county) in the southwest of the province of Córdoba, bang in the geographical centre of Andalucía. Its capital is the town of Lucena, a name I have always loved.
Under the Romans, Hispania was divided into three provinces: Lusitania (now Portugal and Extremadura), Hispania Tarraconensis in the north and north-west (capital was Tarraco, now Tarragona), and Hispania Baetica in the south. Betis was what the Romans called the Guadalquivir river. And Real Betis Balompié is one of Seville’s first division football teams (the other is Sevilla FC). Interestingly ‘balompié’ is the literal Spanish translation of ‘football’ as opposed to the anglicism ‘fútbol.’ More about the word balompié in the book.
November 17, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Lucena, by the way, is where everyone goes from around hee (Malaga) to buy furniture – the place is full of mueble warehouses on the outskirts of town. Some more useless trivia: the people from the town are called “Lucentinos” and the city was originally known as Eliossana, from the Hebrew Elí hosanna, “God may save us”. Muslims called it Al-Yussana.
November 17, 2008 at 12:30 pm
That’s really interesting. I’d always associated Lucena with luz. Like luciérnaga = glow worm or firefly.