The Spanish Cup (currently known as King's Cup) is a traditional tournament that has been going on for quite a long time now; actually, it was the first basketball competition to be organized in Spain, shortly after this sport was introduced into the country by Eusebio Millán Alonso, a priest who, during his stay in Cuba, was fascinated by a game called basketball ("baloncesto" in Spanish). Back in Spain, in 1921, he decided to make it a mandatory activity for his pupils at San Antón School, in Barcelona. So, he installed two rudimentary baskets in the yard for the kids to play, and went even farther to organize a minor tournament in the school. It was at San Antón where the first Spanish basketball club was founded: Laietà Basket-Ball Club.

On April 15, 1923, the First Catalonian Championship got into shape, thus initiating the official competitions in Spain. Société Patrie beat Barcelona in the final with the almost incredible score (nowadays) of... 8-4!!! Then followed, in 1931, the First Castilian Championship, won by Rayo Club (from Madrid). In the interim, the Spanish Basketball Federation was established (1923). By 1933, these two regional tournaments merged into the first Spanish Championship, played by the winners and runners-up in both Catalonia and Castile (the Spanish League hadn't been yet created). After two contested and irregular semi-finals, on October 29, 1933, Rayo Club and Real Madrid—then called simply Madrid CF, without the "Real" title, abolished by the II Spanish Republic—played the first national final in the history of Spanish basketball (the former won 21-11). Next year there was no Spanish Championship whatever, since the Catalonian teams boycotted the competition in retaliation for what happened in those semi-finals (they blamed both the officials and the clay court in Madrid). After the interruption brought about by the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the championship was resumed in 1940 under the obvious name of Cup of His Excellency the Generalissimo Franco. Things went this way until 1977, when the tournament was again renamed as Cup of His Majesty the King don Juan Carlos I (in short King's Cup), which is how it's been known up till today.

NOTES

• Official scores and statistics of the Spanish Basketball Federation (FEB) from season 1968-69 on, and Basketball Clubs Association (ACB) from season 1983-84 on. Additional information sources: basketball magazines Rebote (1960-), Gigantes (1985-) and newspapers 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."