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From the archive: Uruguay receives a royal visit
The Plaza de la Constitución in Montevideo, with the cathedral on the right, in August 1925
ALAMY
From The Times: August 13, 1925
Montevideo, the first city which the Prince of Wales will visit on reaching South America, has a present population of about 450,000. Without the grand picturesqueness of Rio de Janeiro, or the immense wealth, extent, and population of Buenos Aires, it still has a charm peculiarly its own, and those who have once lived in it generally wish to return to it.
Like most South American cities, Montevideo is laid out in 'squares', chess-board fashion, but occasional deviations from the straight line and undulations in the street levels prevent that sense of flatness and monotony which is apt to get on one's nerves in Buenos Aires. It is a city still in the making, in which handsome modern edifices, some of considerable architectural pretensions, alternate freely with older buildings of a less imposing type. The sky-line, indeed, is one of the most irregular imaginable, but the effect of this is by no means unpleasing.
The British community in Montevideo is a small one, perhaps numbering 900 persons all told, men, women, and children, and it is a peculiar fact that it has decreased rather than increased during the last 25 or 30 years, not growing with the growth of the city; and this means that its importance in relation to the general population has diminished. But, in spite of its reduced numbers, it is remarkably well organized, for there are some 17 or 18 institutions and clubs for social, sporting, and other purposes.
Football was practically unknown in Uruguay until some thirty-nine years ago, when a handful of young Englishmen, most of them ex-pupils of a local English school, started playing with improvised goal posts and a home-made football. Out of this nucleus was formed the Albion, the first football club, now extinct.
At first a few Uruguayans used to come and look on at the game with a rather contemptuous spirit, and the local Press made fun of it as a 'barbarous sport' of 'los locos Ingleses' (the mad English). Gradually, however, they came to understand it better, and joined in the play themselves. By degrees it spread. Uruguayan football clubs were established, and before twenty years had passed it had been taken up enthusiastically and became eminently the national game.
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