"When I was younger they had told me: 'How can it be that a girl has beaten me?'"

BarcelonaWe meet a short distance from her chess club, Tres Peons, in Gràcia, where on summer afternoons she trains children at a summer camp. Alba de Lomas, who is 23 years old and from Argentona, is the absolute champion of Catalonia and, in parallel, creates content for social media to promote a mental sport in which women are still a minority. Her path in the world of chess started a bit by chance, when she was still a child. "I started at 12 years old, when my father taught my brothers and me to play chess. I always say that at first chess didn't grab my attention much, but my brothers played many tournaments and I used to accompany them. Until one day, suddenly, they attracted me and I started playing it," she explains. She says there was nothing specific that made her click, but she does remember that she signed up for a tournament for non-federated players and won it. "That extra motivation encouraged me to start competing, but it was really from one day to the next," she details.

With all the years she has been competing, she says she has often had to play against men, because even today the presence of women in chess tournaments is residual. "There are very few women. There is only 7% of registered female players in Catalonia, which is very little. Most of the time I am alone. I like chess a lot, but any girl who doesn't feel so much passion will end up quitting it," she says. She assures that most of the time the treatment from her male rivals is respectful and they play on equal terms, but she also admits that she has had to earn their respect, especially when she was little. "Some time ago they made some unfortunate comments, like: 'How can a girl have beaten me if I've spent my life playing chess?'"

In fiction, chess players are portrayed as gifted individuals or outright geniuses. Alba de Lomas breaks the myth: "Many people think that to play chess you have to be very intelligent, and that's not necessarily true. I was a child like any other and at school I got very normal grades, but by dedicating myself to it a lot and working every day I managed to reach a certain level. If you want to be a grandmaster or world champion, obviously you have to have something more," she explains. However, she admits that she has encountered children from whom, with just a glance, you can detect that they have talent, "because they think differently."

This does not mean that you don't need to work or train. "In chess, a lot of consistency is needed. If you don't have it, no matter how much talent you have, you won't be able to differentiate yourself from others," she argues. One of the series that has contributed to solidifying the idea of genius attributed to chess players is The Queen's Gambit, on Netflix. "I was delighted with the series, even though there is a lot of fiction. Nobody thinks about a chess game the same way as the protagonist, but the tournaments are indeed as seen in the series. Most of the games they play in the series are known, and if you are a chess player it is very fun, because you can recognize who played it," she says.

Besides competing, she also gives classes and creates content for social media to promote chess, following in the footsteps of Swedish-Spanish player Anna Cramling, her great role model. Among other things, she streams her games. "There isn't a single girl in Catalonia who creates content about chess, and that made me a bit dizzy, but in January of this year I decided to go for it. I try to make it so that anyone can understand my game, you just need to know the basics of chess," explains De Lomas. With both the content she creates and the classes she teaches, she wants to try to be a role model so that girls feel welcome in chess. "My first coach was Elisabeth Riera, who is still competing. It was very important to me that she was a girl, because it was easier for me to open up to her," she recalls.