José Eduardo Hernández

RFEN, 6 February 2021: the council unanimously approved the file opened on 1 February 2021. The name in that note is «Árbitro Eduardo Hernández». The pool opened on 1 November 2014, in calle Lucero, with no name. In the same note he says he has lived there for more than 40 years and that he was founder, technical director and president of the municipal sports board, a member of the RFEN board, president of the national referees’ committee, an international referee and an independent sports councillor.

The Vélez-Málaga sports department, on 22 February 2022, uses «J. Eduardo Hernández», «José Eduardo Hernández» and «Eduardo Hernández» in the same note. Jesús Pérez Atencia says the pool takes the name José Eduardo Hernández. Mayor Antonio Moreno Ferrer says that from that day it is officially «Eduardo Hernández». The names come from that note and are left unresolved.

FAN, 5 February 2021: the council had opened the process for the name «Eduardo Hernández». The note describes him as 70, an official at three Olympic Games and six World Championships, president of the national referees’ committee for fifteen years, a member of the RFEN board and the holder of posts at the European swimming league. It does not list the six World Championships.

FAN, 16 March 2016: he received the Olympic insignia from Alejandro Blanco, president of the Spanish Olympic Committee, with Fernando Carpena, president of the RFEN, as witness. The honours had been granted a few months earlier. At that date he was provincial delegate of the Andalusian federation in Málaga and a member of the RFEN swimming and open-water area. The note calls him an open-water referee and a member of the European committee for that discipline, and a member of the FAN and RFEN boards.

The same note details work at the Seville Europeans (1997), the Madrid Europeans (2004), the Almería Mediterranean Games (2005), the Málaga water-polo Europeans (2008) and the Barcelona World Championships (2013), and swimming officiating at the Seoul (1988), Barcelona (1992) and Atlanta (1996) Games. It adds the presidency of the national referees’ committee, the 1998 award as best Andalusian referee across all sports, the post of secretary general of the RFEN and a start as a referee in 1964.

In the FAN interview of 24 February 2022 he says, in the first person, that he began at the Melilla federation as a timekeeper, with Nicasio García; that he sat the national referee exam in Santander; and that work took him to Vélez-Málaga, where he joined the Málaga delegation under Tomás Zamudio. The national committee named him an international referee in 1977. His first assignment was the 1981 Split Europeans. In 1980 he gave courses in Venezuela before the Pan American Games. In 1985 he accepted the presidency of the referees’ college offered by Alfredo Flórez, and was later elected president of the national committee with 80 % of the vote.

In that interview he adds that he was Spanish-team delegate in Buenos Aires, Copenhagen, Sofia, Rome, Lund and Stockholm, and that he was on the organisation chart of the 1986 Madrid World Championships. Seoul 1988 was his first Games. At the date of the interview he was the RFEN open-water member and a member of the European swimming league’s committee for that discipline, and he had spent more than 10 years on the FAN board, with Juan Viota, as delegate in Málaga. Of the municipal sports board he says he was treasurer, technical director, vice-president and president for more than 8 years.

In the same interview he says that with Alfonso Wucherpfennig he published a book of more than 280 pages, El arbitraje en natación, translated into English and French, and later an English–Spanish dictionary of officiating phrases. The book was not checked against a publisher’s record.