Biscay Championship
football league
The Biscay Regional Championship (Campeonato Regional de Vizcaya), also called the North Regional Championship (Campeonato Regional Norte) in its early editions, was an official football tournament in Spain organised by the North Football Federation.
It was played annually between 1913 and 1940 and served to elect the representatives of the region in the Spanish Cup, which at that time served as the overall annual national championship.
History
The tournament was launched in 1913, following the creation of the North Football Federation (Federación Norte), initially consisting of clubs from the Basque provinces (Biscay, Gipuzkoa and Álava) and Cantabria (then the province of Santander). The first edition of the Northern Regional Championship started on 12 October 1913, with six teams: three from Biscay (Athletic Bilbao, Arenas Club de Getxo and Deportivo de Bilbao) and three from Gipuzkoa (Real Sociedad, Sporting de Irun and Racing de Irun – the latter two would soon merge as Real Unión). Athletic was the first champion.
In 1916 the Royal Spanish Football Federation permitted the clubs from the province of Santander to abandon the North Federation and join the new Cantabrian Regional Federation of Football, along with clubs from the province of Oviedo. But the situation was reversed again two years later.
After several disagreements between the clubs of Biscay and Gipuzkoa, culminating in a pivotal championship match between Athletic and Real Sociedad being abandoned, in 1918 the National Committee of the Spanish federation agreed to divide the Northern Federation in these two regions. Thus, in the 1918–19 season the Gipuzkoa clubs launched their own championship while the North Championship teams continued with other Basque teams and the return of Racing de Santander, representing the Cantabrian clubs.
In 1922 the clubs in the province of Santander finally left the North Federation to create its own umbrella organisation, which launched the Cantabrian Regional Championship.
“Biscay Championship” enters the record as football league. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Biscay, Championship and football can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3653506. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1913, 1940, 1916 and 1918.
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This entry incorporates text from “Biscay Championship” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.