[4][5] Elías only played three matches for FC Barcelona, one per season between 1900 and 1903, all of which being friendlies,[1] including the first-ever Derbi Barceloní on 23 December 1900, which ended in a 0–0 draw.

[6] In addition to football, Elías also practiced gymnastics, cycling, sailing, rowing, swimming, fencing, tennis, hiking, horse riding, and motor racing.

[5] Elías was also a notable basketball player, a good horseman, and a pedestrian runner, so it can be said that he was interested in any sporting activity, and in fact, on the occasion of the presence in Barcelona of a group of jiu-jitsu experts in 1907, he was one of the first to promote them in the press.

[5] He even organized snow competitions in Ribes, excursions to the French Alps, participated in automobile tests, and regularly attended the congresses of the Spanish Velocipedic Union.

[5] Eventually, he began the formation of the Physical Education Commission of the Commonwealth of Catalonia, drafting the rules for its operation and even the bill that was presented to the Assembly.

[9] In September 1911, he wrote several articles in the newspaper La Veu de Catalunya in which he vindicated the need to send Catalan athletes to the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm.

[11] Elias's campaign against the inactivity of the COE reached its peak on 19 October 1913, when he gave the infamous conference that marked the starting point of Catalan Olympism.

[2][4] His lectures on Olympicism had the desired outcome because, in 1920, the COE finally set up the first official Spanish delegation to the Olympic Games, with Elías even opening a popular subscription at the bank office where he worked to cover expenses.

[2][15] They had first raised this issue in 1914, and two years later, Elías and other members of the Catalan Athletics Federation met with the mayor to claim from the city council the transfer of land on which to build the long-awaited stadium.

[15] His very active role in promoting the Olympic movement in Catalonia led him to become a personal friend of Coubertin, being the most responsible for his visit to Tarragona on 8 December 1926.

[3][5] Elías was the first sports journalist to write in Catalan, he contributed to practically all the newspapers and magazines of his time,[2] such as all those mentioned previously, plus Crónica de Barcelona, Vida Marítima (the official organ of the Spanish Maritime League), and Patria.

[2][3][4] The prologue of this book was written by none other than Joan Gamper, who stated that "at the dawn of football in Barcelona, ​​when the nucleus of players in this beautiful city was made up only of a few volunteers, I met and treated José Elias...".

[5] Throughout his life, Elias was always firm and consistent with his ideas, so he refused to renounce his deep-rooted Catholicism, even in the worst moments of the Spanish Civil War, at the end of which he was purged by the new Francoist authorities due to his Catalanist past as a militant in the Regionalist League.

[6] In fact, 12 grandchildren, 22 great-grandchildren and 11 great-great-grandchildren of Elias signed a letter sent to Josep Maria Bartomeu, the then Barcelona president, in which they requested "formal recognition" of their ancestor "as founder of the club in 1899".