Budo international Martial Arts Magazine Jul.-Aug. 2014 | Page 240

Espinós was a competitor and a
member of the national team run by
the then–karate section of the Spanish
Judo Federation between 1971 and
1974, and a karate teacher between
1975 and 1978, the year when the
Spanish Karate Federation proper
came into being (before then karate
came under the umbrella of the Judo
Federation). Its first president was
Celestino Fernández, who served until
1984, when Antonio Espinós was
elected to replace him and also
became a member of the Spanish
Olympic Committee.
“The only World Championships
that I missed was in 1988 in Cairo,
because my father was very ill and
died shortly afterwards. I was thinking
about this the other day when I heard
that your father had died, for which I
offer my condolences, because I was
there with you at your house in
Guadalajara when he was in hospital.
Back then there were far fewer mobile
phones than there are today and I was
worried about being able to find out
how my father was. The two
memories are linked for me and that
was over 25 years ago now. Wow! So
much has happened since then.”

Thanks, without doubt, to his
management skills and capacity for
hard work, Antonio Espinós began to
make a name for himself in the world
of inter national karate politics.
Between 1989 and 1995 Antonio
Espinós was the general secretary’s
assistant at the European Karate Union
(later renamed the European Karate
Federation)). In 1994 he became the
senior vice-president of the World
Karate Federation (WKF), and a year
the same position at the European
Federation, to be elected as its
president in 1997.
“I left the Spanish Federation in
December 1996, and then I was
elected the European Federation in
May 1997, in Tenerife. Then in
October 1998 I was elected
president of the World Karate
Federation, in Rio de Janeiro.”
I remember that a few days before
that we spoke on the phone about one
of my books, Karate: mucho más que
un deporte (“Karate: Much more than a
sport”), which was almost ready for to
be sent to the printers but I wanted to
include the fact that a Spaniard was
the president of the World Karate
Federation. And that’s what happened.

How did you come to set your sights
on the European and World
Federations?
“It all began in Granada, at the
1992 World Championships. It was a
situation I just found myself in.
Before then I’d never even
considered it. I’d never even thought
about the executive committee of
the World Federation. It wasn’t
something I was concerned about,
because I was very busy at work as
an engineer, with the Spanish
Federation and so on. But things
turned out unexpectedly and it all
happened very fast. It also helped
that we had lost our recognition
from the IOC, with Jacques Delcourt
who had no options to access the
IOC. What happened with the ITKF
was more a personal issue against
Delcourt, who was not very highly
thought of, and the truth is that with
him we had no chance of being IOC
recognised, regardless of whether
we joined forces with the ITKF or
not. Then someone like me came
along and you can see what’s
happened since.”
Indeed, that affair, which seemed to
demand the coming together of the