In addition to football, Club Atleta also performed in other modalities such as athletics, cricket, and cycling, although they also practiced others such as rugby, rowing and tug of war.
Club Atleta was the first to bring football to the region, and most notably, to Bilbao, a sport practically unknown in the city at the time, playing a prominent role in promoting the sport there as the Bilbainos who watched their matches fell in love with the game and soon the local population joined the game too, even challenging the British workers to a match in 1894.
Biscayan investor José María Martínez de las Rivas (1848–1913) and his brother, Francisco, together with an English shipowner and politician named Charles Mark Palmer (1822–1907) from Newcastle, won the contract for the construction of three battleships for the Navy in 1888, after beating several rivals in a competition.
On 1 June 1889, the contract was signed, and on 30 October of the same year, the Martínez Rivas Palmer Collective Company was registered in the Bilbao Mercantile Registry, dedicated to shipbuilding for the State, as well as for individuals.
[3] After the Spanish–American War of 1898 (in which the three battleships built in the Nervión Shipyards would be sunk in Santiago de Cuba), and a long series of lawsuits and personal and political confrontations, they would re-open in 1900.
[3] The English employees of the Nervión Shipyards, located in Sestao (Vizcaya), founded a multi-sports and recreational club called Club Atleta, to keep their numerous British workers entertained and distracted, because indeed, for these workers sport meant a distraction from the pessimism of those turbulent years, with epidemics of smallpox and other diseases, social protests, and economic and political crises.
[1] Machinery Department: James D. Weir (South-Western); George Baird (Vale of Leven) and James Mitchell (Kyles); W. Robertson, D. Crawford and Hugh Black (Glasgow Thistle); Fred Gunn (West Gurton), M. McFadzean (Kilmarnock); Thomas Hume (Port-Glasgow Athletic); George Pennycook (Whitefield) and J. Jaye (Glasgow).
[1] Club Atleta continued with its events and activities, but its football matches between the machine departments (engineers) and the shipyards were slow to reappear in the press.
On 12 January 1891, another football match was held, taking place at the Hippodrome of Las Arenas, and was attended by a large number of the British residents there.
[1] Machinery Department: Porter, Weir; Defenses, G. Baird and H. Black; Media, Rearey, Izatt and Haveron; Forwards, Gunn, Peannycook, Horn, Higgins and Kane.
Shipyard Department Porter, Merchans; Defenses, Taylor and Foster; Media, Mills, Fennah and Hubbick; Forwards, A. Beattie, Robb, McColl, Bennett and J.
[1] In September and October 1891, the Club Atleta of the Nervión Shipyards organizes various sports events at the Hippodrome of Lamiako, with cycling events, athletics (races, jumps), cricket, sack races, and “game of strength”, an archaic tug of war that was contested between the workers of the Machinery workshop and those of the Shipyard, limited to two groups of six people from each department, which was the only modality limited to Spanish citizens, as the others were open to everyone.
[5] These miners, who had only seen the sea for the previous week, were desperate to leave the ships and find a patch of grass to play their favorite sports.
[2] By 1892 the sheer quantity of Englishmen playing football on La Campa de los Ingleses meant that they had to move to another pitch that could properly accommodate the growing population of Brits.
[1] Local newspapers report several meetings between these two sides, and there is even evidence of a "serious" tournament in the winter of 1892–93, which was played in Lamiako between a team from the Club Atleta (probably a combination of the best players from each department) and Bilbao FC.
[5][2][6] Some of the figures who started for the British that day were players from Club Atleta, such as the goalkeeper, George Baird, Rearey, Armstrong, and Brand.