The centenary sport in Catalonia that Franco wanted to let die

Barcelona"Rugby people always open their doors to you. They are always willing," says Francesc Gómez, who in 2020 began interviewing personalities from Catalan rugby, aware that the centenary of this sport in Catalonia was approaching. "They were interviews with all kinds of people linked to our sport, people who love it. I went to record a veterans' match of the legendary Albert Malo, on a field full of mud," he recalls, referring to the best Catalan player of all time, captain of the only Spanish team to have gone to a World Cup so far and the first Spaniard to play in New Zealand. Gómez always found people willing to tell their experiences in a sport that changes your life. "In rugby, if you don't put your heart into it... you don't do it well, with so much contact. It is very emotional to hear rugby people explain how it has changed their lives," he explains.

From those interviews a documentary emerged. And from a documentary joys have emerged, since The unknown story, produced with Simón Lorenzo of Kaito Films and with the collaboration of the Catalan Rugby Federation, 3Cat, the Network and RTVE, has received a special mention from the jury of the BCN Sports Film Festival of sports documentaries. It can be seen on the 3Cat platform, and was released last Wednesday in a packed Girona cinema in Barcelona, with plenty of rugby shirts. More than one eyebrow and ear, with scars from the past, served to recognise who had played this sport.

"The documentary wants to tell the story, but also to listen to its people. That's the part I like the most, when people say why they are excited about this sport. A sport that faces challenges, because now we could say that we are... countercultural. Rugby is governed by a spirit of solidarity. Helping each other, I mean. Today it seems that we are moving towards an increasingly individual society, in which easy performance is desired, in which people are more selfish. Like other sports, we have a challenge.

Gómez, in addition to being the director of the documentary, is the head of press for the Catalan Rugby Federation and a former player. "Like many people, I discovered it at university. Even today, many people get into rugby like that. Those who play set up a table, invite students to training, and many stay," he explains. A trend that changed two decades ago. "Around the year 2000, in Catalonia we had barely 2,000 players. Now we have 8,000. The clubs realised that they had to create schools, look after the base... It was the time when rugby became professional on a global scale, moving away from that violent sport, which is logical."

Matches with more than 15,000 people in the stands

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Catalana, in 2023 Gómez and Kaito Films managed to find the support to bring forward this documentary, which begins with the arrival of this sport, when Baldiri Aleu published the manifesto entitled About football-rugby in the diary The Voice of Catalonia in 1922. A few months later, the Federation was already in place and the first match of the national team was played, which ended with a 0-9 defeat against a team from Toulouse. "There was a time when rugby was on the verge of becoming the second sport in Catalonia, it was very popular, in the 1920s and 1930s. It helped to make the Catalan national team official. And to make it a strong, contact sport, as if society was somehow preparing for a civil conflict. There was a civil Catalonia." When the Olympic Stadium of Montjuïc was inaugurated during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, in addition to a football match, a rugby match was also held, for example.

In 1934, in fact, the International Amateur Rugby Federation (FIRA) was founded in Paris with the presence of the federations of France, Italy, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Catalonia. The Spanish Federation protested because it also wanted to be part of it and had only joined as an affiliated federation. That is to say, from 1934 to 1940 Catalonia was a full member of FIRA, a situation that ended with Francoism. The fact that there was a Catalan federation older than the Spanish one has always left the possibility of fighting for official recognition of the national team half open, with some judicial defeats and political pressures, on the one hand, and lack of interest, on the other. "I am very sceptical. It is true that the new sports law would open the door, since we were founded before the Spanish Federation and it is a deeply rooted sport, but the Spanish government and the Spanish Federation have never shown a willingness to engage in dialogue, with a radically opposed position," says the president of the Catalan Federation, Ignasi Planas.

"In the documentary we have a conversation between historians Xavier Pujadas and Carles Santacana to try to explain what happened. Why did we go from a society with many sports to living under the shadow of so much football? It was Franco's regime that led Spain to become a single-sport country. It's not that it was a bet agreed on in one of them. It was, wake up. They ignored the other sports. In Catalonia, in 30 years of Franco's regime, from 1939 to 1970, only one new club was born. In fact, in Catalonia there is an obvious connection between anti-fascism and rugby. "In Cornellà they remember players who were militiamen. We have the Miret brothers, who were Barça players and died in Mauthausen... And the case of Michel Reinard. He was the one who brought rugby here with Baldiri Aleu. Reinard, French, was the one who knew. Well, he was a spy who would help republican militiamen."

The documentary also recalls the arrival of women's rugby. "As in society, there was sexism in rugby. There were many people who did not believe that a woman could play such a tough sport, but in 1971 we had a team that was born at the INEF, which could be the first documented match in Europe with 15 players, since before matches were played with fewer players, because it is difficult to have a match with 15 players today, since it means having about 30 players," adds the director. Rugby continues to face challenges, such as the lack of fields or the ability to gain followers. Whoever enters, normally does not leave. It is a sport that changes lives.