Old pugilist from Britain and a figure from Spain (5)
I believe the answer is:
bruno
'figure from spain' is the definition.
The definition suggests a singular noun which matches the answer.
'old pugilist from britain and a' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'old' could be 'o' (abbreviation) and 'o' is located in the answer.
'from' could be 'un' (I've seen this in other clues) and 'un' is located in the answer.
'britain' could be 'br' (abbreviation) and 'br' is present in the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for bruno that I've seen before include "Giordano -; Sylvie and -, Carroll" , "One of the 22 [FRANKS] who fought" , "Sylvie and -- (Lewis Carroll)" , "Famous boxer" .)