At the same time that Apunts Sports Medicine was informed that it was going to receive an Impact Factor (JCR) by 2023, Dr Jesús Galilea Muñoz (1926-2022), who was the heart and soul of the journal ever since it was founded in 1964, left us.
Dr Jesús Galilea Muñoz was born in Granada on 8 October 1926. Because his father was a military pharmacist, he moved from city to city throughout his childhood. Perhaps that is why for him, home wasn't where he lived, but rather his family and friends. After he finished secondary school in Salamanca at the age of 17, the family moved to Barcelona, where he began studying to be a doctor at Hospital Clínic's Faculty of Medicine. From that point on, his medical studies inevitably combined with his love of sport, laying the foundations for what would become his professional passion: sports medicine.
Dr. Galilea was the driving force and undisputed leader of sports medicine in our country. This is reflected in his professional career: he was the director of the Centre for Sports Medicine at Residència Blume in Barcelona from 1962 to 1975, where he not only spearheaded the centre but was also the ideologue of a young, daring speciality. He brought together a generation of doctors who sparked the definitive launch of sports medicine in our country. In 1975 he took the reins of the recently inaugurated Institut Nacional d'Educació Física de Catalunya (National Association of Physical Education of Catalonia), serving on the governing board from 1981 to 1996. In 1987, he was commissioned to organise the Research Department of the nascent Centre d'Alt Rendiment (High Performance Centre) in Sant Cugat del Vallès. From 1986 to 1991 he was head of the Sports Medicine Division of the Government of Catalonia's General Directorate of Sport. He was the first to inaugurate every single one of these services and institutions, building their foundations, shaping them and giving them substance and, perhaps most importantly, instilling them with his character, a balance of seriousness and passion.
Together with Dr. Josep Estruch Batlle, in 1964, he founded the journal Apuntes del Centro Juvenil de Medicina Deportiva, the seed of what is now Apunts Sports Medicine. Dr Galilea directed the journal from 1964 to 1999, surrounding himself with a series of remarkable professionals and getting some of the most important international researchers in the speciality — including (1978)1, Saltin et al (1982)2 and Wasserman et al (1991)3—to publish their work in his journal. He nurtured it, his extraordinary dedication and enthusiasm making it grow.
Following his retirement from his professional life, we know that Dr Galilea followed the evolution of the journal with interest and enjoyment, and he was keen to learn about the changes we were progressively making to align the journal with new editorial trends. However, there is one thing that the journal will never change and that those of us who humbly consider ourselves his heirs will never give up, and that is to carry on with the seriousness and enthusiasm that he passed on to us.
You'll be able to read the article in Catalan and Spanish by clicking on the following link: “Supplementary Materials”.
