There already existed a championship in Spain called Campeonato de España, but with professional football forming part of Spanish society it was necessary to create a new competition that met the requirements.
The idea
was to create a football league similar to the British Premier League, but it
wasn’t until 1928 when the clubs and the Spanish federations got to an
agreement. La Liga was going to run with 10 teams, but who was going to start
playing the newly created La Liga?
They
decided to invite the 6 champions of Campeonato de España (Athletic club,
Arenas Club de Guecho, Real Madrid C.F., Real Sociedad, F.C. Barcelona and Real
Unión Club) and three runner-ups (R.C.D. Español, Atlético de Madrid and Club
Esportiu Europa). To decide which team would be the 10th, they
created a tournament that Real Racing Club de Santander won.
In the
1934-1935 season for the first time they added two new teams.
So that is
the beginning of La Liga, but when did it become what it is today?
At first La
Liga was organized by the RFEF (Spanish Real Federation of Football) but the
league for the season 1984-1985 was organized for the first time by an independent
organism formed by the initiative of the clubs involved, who were not satisfied
with the management and the economical distribution of the RFEF. This organism
was called the LFP (Professional Football League).
In the next
season (1986-1987) the LFP tried, without success, to introduce a play-off
system. Once the normal league finished, they divided the 18 teams that formed
the league then intro three groups of 6. This was the longest season of the
history of La Liga, with 44 days (34 league days and 10 of play-off). Only one
of the teams was relegated but 3 were promoted, so the next season La Liga was
composed by 20 teams, like today!
