When Linares was the Wimbledon of chess

The best room at the Aníbal de Linares Hotel is named after Gary Kasparov.

Why that?

Why in Linares, whose mythical room for so many years was that of the Hotel Cervantes (today closed due to change of ownership) in which Manolete dressed on the day of his death and gave such a distinction to the great chess player?

The explanation lies in the figure of Luis Rentero, whom we could place on the podium of the great Linarenses of history along with Andrés Segovia and Raphael.

Luis Rentero was a self-made man who began distributing bread on a motorcycle in Linares and went on to create a network of supermarkets that he sold to a Belgian group for 3,000 million pesetas.

With that money he bought a couple of hotels, one of them the Aníbal, of which he would eventually become a world chess emporium.

Because Luis Rentero was a

of this sport, today not as present in our lives as when he, born in 1942, was a boy.

In the fifties there was no television and in every bar there was a chess board that competed with cards.

There was always some game, with the inevitable opinionated onlookers.

Casinos and schools organized championships and throughout Spain there was talk with pride of a certain Arturito Pomar, a Majorcan boy who had a hard time with the international grandmasters.

In all the newspapers, a chess problem inevitably appeared next to the crossword puzzle and the hieroglyph.

It used to be the final stretch of some famous game, from a position (white plays and wins...) from which the fans moved and contrasted ideas.

In that atmosphere Luis Rentero grew up, who became champion of Jaén and runner-up of Andalusia.

When in 1977 he had reached a comfortable position he decided to imitate an initiative under way in Montilla and organized a chess tournament in Linares.

He was so happy with the first edition that he outlined an ambitious plan: he traveled to Yugoslavia to invite Anatoly Karpov, world champion, to the next edition, for which with that hook he would add a great cast of figures.

That worked and 1978 was the start of a tournament that would soon become legendary.

First it was every two years, the odd ones from 1979 to 1987, then annually, always with a minimum of 12 participants, all first-rate.

And a demanding approach: Rentero hated that tables were agreed upon, he urged and rewarded hard play: "Blood runs through the tiles of Aníbal", he used to boast.

His motto was: "This is Linares, where three eggs are two pairs."

The press from all over the world gave full note of the championship and Linares was ceasing to be the city where Manolete died to become the Wimbledon of Chess.

Kasparov participated for 15 years and won nine editions.

He even left the pillow there.

In the first participation he had a big fight with Rentero for some tables that he was not convinced.

It is already said that he admitted surrenders, but they soon became friends, for the good of the tournament whose impressive list of winners compensates for the efforts of its creator: Christiansen, Karpov, Kasparov, Timman, Spassky, Illescas, Ljubojevic, Carlssen, Topalov, Ivanchuk, Kramnik, Anand, Grischuk…

In 1991, Rentero managed to be received by Fisher in Los Angeles to convince him to reappear, but he asked for an impossible amount and that was frustrated.

The disappointment made up for him when he was invited to Moscow the following year to receive the Leonardo da Vinci award and play a game from earth to space against an astronaut on a mission.

There he was a celebrity.

In 1998 he suffered a tremendous traffic accident that left him very diminished.

The City Council took charge of the tournament, with his advice, and in that period (in 2005) there was an announcement by Kasparov that he was leaving chess.

In 2011 Santana collapsed, which manufactured agricultural machinery and Land Rovers, those robust off-road vehicles used by the Civil Guard, the National Police and many people to mess around in the countryside.

A second and final blow to a city that had already suffered the decline years ago of its first reason for being, mining (in fact, the winner's trophy was a silver gabria).

That same year Wimbledon Chess died.

Rentero would pass away in 2015 and the then existing Avenida del Ajedrez was renamed Avenida del Ajedrez Luis Rentero.

There is no longer a tournament, but the Hannibal Hotel is still standing, its best room bears the name of Gary Kasparov and in the

are the photos of all the winners, the

the 64-square sport.

The spirit of Luis Rentero continues within those walls.

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