Exiles Cable Club

The Exiles Cable Club was a multi-sports club based in Galicia, Vigo. It was founded in 1873 by English workers of the Eastern Telegraph Company. It was one of the first companies dedicated to sports in the country, most notably, football, having a section dedicated to the said sport due to its rapid growth in England, the homeland of the company's workers. Recent studies have shown that the Exiles football team, known as Exiles Foot-Ball Club or Exiles FC, was the first football club to have been recorded in the Iberian Peninsula, being one of the proto-clubs that pioneered and expanded football in Spain, together with the Rio Tinto English Club (1878) and the Cricket and Football Club of Madrid (1879).

Despite connecting Britain with many countries by telegraph and maintaining important international relations, Eastern Telegraph Company had their headquarters in Porthcurno, south of Cornwall, a small isolated town located in the far west of England, thus earning the nickname "Exiles". Besides Galicia, the club is also regarded as one of the most important entities in the amateur beginnings of football in Gibraltar, having founded the Merchants Cup (the forerunner for the Gibraltar Football League founded in 1907). It is not known with certainty what was the fate of the club, although it is known that it disappeared in the middle of the 20th century.