Since its foundation on 13th October 1927 and in just three quarters of a century, the Santander Royal Yacht Club (R.C.M.S.), whose illustrious predecessor was the Royal Regatta Club, has become one of the most prestigious and active sporting societies in Spain.

The same year as its foundation, having received enthusiastic support from King Alfonso XIII, the Honorary Chairman and an active participant in the Club’s work during his Summers in the city of Santander, a great international regatta was organised with the New York-Santander crossing, which took place the following Summer. This was to be the first of a series of international regattas between Santander and different French and English ports, thus making the recently created Club famous across the Atlantic.

With the advent of the Spanish Second Republic, the R.C.M.S. suffered the effects of the stormy political atmosphere when its first Club House was looted and burnt down by a violent demonstration in August 1932. So from the ashes of the wooden club house, which had been the jetty used for transatlantic liners anchored in the bay, a project arose for a new building. This was built over piles made of reinforced concrete next to the breakwater for the Puertochico dock, to which it is linked by a short gangway. Designed in the structuralist style, typical of the nineteen thirties which was inspired precisely by naval architecture, so the Club looked like a white transatlantic liner moored in the legendary dock of Santander.

After the terrible parenthesis of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, the Santander Royal Yacht Club kept an obligatory low profile with few sporting activities and making up for the lack of means with enthusiasm, whilst awaiting better times.

In the year 1948, the Brixham-Santander and, the following year the Belle-Île-Santander regatta meant, in sporting terms, the breaking of the international embargo, thus recomencing the tradition of the Club’s early years. A great regatta with the New York-Santander crossing was organised in 1957, in collaboration with the Yacht Clubs of New York and La Habana, This was followed in 1958 by another one between Cowes and Santander.

Apart from the international regattas, the bay was used as a testing ground with regattas for new sailing craft, such as the odd "Star" and the agile "Lagunejas" or "Snipes", in line with the economic boom in the sixties, which ended brilliantly in 1968 with the Naval Week, in which the Yacht Club played such a major role.

The historical decade of the seventies, apart from witnessing the fast growth in regatta competitors and the new kinds of craft such as the Dragon, Finn, Dinghy, Vaurien and Optimist, was also the fortunate time of the initiative for creating the El Puntal Sailing School. It was this event which triggered off the love for the sea amongst the youngest members who nowadays are veterans and the school was the seed for the subsequent and exceptional crop of triumphs and prizes, often at Olympic level.

With a background of Olympic medal success at the Montreal Olympics (1976) and at the Moscow Olympics (1980) with the Olympic medals won respectively by Gorostegui and by Abascal and also with various Olympic Diplomas, nonetheless we should not forget the most recent achievements. Amongst these, the 2000 World Championship of López-Vázquez and De La Plaza, the of 2002 of the Amaliach Brothers and the World Cup won by Torcida, as well as the innumerable championships of Europe and Spain won by different crews from the R.C.M.S.

The improvement in the Club’s sporting facilities, with the floating moorings and the mooring places in the Puertochico dock, long overwhelmed by hundreds of applications, was the greatest novelty of the last two decades of the 20th century. We should highlight a terrorist attack which seriously damaged the Club House on 19th October 1987, which was then repaired in line with its long tradition and fine style.

An ever increasing number of young members, more regattas and more prizes, impossible to even mention them all given the space of this page, have made our Club one of the most outstanding ones in Spain due to its great activity and professionalism, with well-deserved fame both in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean.

This fame is also due to the impeccable organisation, by the Yacht Club, of international regattas and events, from which it is suffice to mention the most recent example, the Tall Ships Regatta for "Cutty Sark" which, in the Summer of 2002, brought together in Santander 80 ships of very different characteristics, amongst them the "most revered monsters" of the tall ships and the Russian "Mir" and "Sedov".