The Barcelona Olympics that were not held due to the Civil War

Barcelona90 years ago, about six thousand athletes arrived in Barcelona to participate in an Olympiad that never took place. Many of those athletes, instead of competing at the Olympic Stadium, ended up fighting against Franco and, in some cases, lost their lives. They were the athletes of the People's Olympiad, a competition designed to combat Nazism that was to be held in Barcelona from July 19 to 26, 1936.

The headquarters of this People's Olympiad was at the Autonomous Center of Shop and Industry Employees (CADCI), a building at the lower part of La Rambla that is currently the headquarters of the UGT of Catalonia. The building is currently hosting Barcelona 1936. The People's Olympiad that wasn't. 90th anniversary, an exhibition organized by the Memorial Democràtic, the UGT of Catalonia, and the Catalan Association of Former Political Prisoners of Francoism. The exhibition recalls those days in July and a project that, although it could not be carried out due to the outbreak of the Civil War, left a memory that has not yet faded.

The root of the project was born when in 1931 Barcelona aspired to be chosen as the venue for the Olympic Games. In April of that year, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had to decide which city would host the 1936 Summer Games. A total of twelve proposals were submitted, but only two reached the end of the process: Berlin and Barcelona. The proclamation of the Spanish Republic, which frightened more than one conservative member of the IOC for fear of unrest, and German diplomacy led to Berlin being chosen. Two years later, in 1933, Hitler came to power. And within two years, he proclaimed the Nuremberg Laws, a set of antisemitic laws. All over the world, thousands of people considered that this state could not host the 1936 Games, but the IOC did not change its plans. Hitler got his way.

It was in this context that different Catalan organizations had the idea of organizing an alternative Olympic Games that would serve as a platform for the fight against Nazism. These entities were integrated into the Organizing Committee of the Popular Olympiad (COOP), which had the support of the Generalitat de Catalunya. In fact, Lluís Companys would be appointed honorary president, and one of the founders of ERC, the former sports leader Josep Anton Trabal, directed it. This Popular Olympiad followed an already established tradition in Europe of militant sport. As early as 1921, the first edition of the Workers' Olympiads had taken place in Prague, created by far-left organizations to break away from a sport of clubs and federations that they considered too conservative. And in 1928, the Spartakiad was born in Moscow, a games organized by the Soviet Union to compete with the Workers' Olympiads. In interwar Europe, thousands of people were active in organizations such as theRed Sports International and the International Workers' Sports Union, entities that in 1935 were already talking about holding a kind of Olympic Games critical of those in Berlin. But none of the ideas that were proposed in France or Spain prospered. The one that took place in 1936 in Catalonia, yes.

With the support of the Generalitat, the Spanish Republican government, and an economic donation from the French Popular Front government, the Barcelona Olympiad could be organized. An ambitious program was created, in which sport shared prominence with culture, art, and advocacy. "The Berlin Games aim to propagate the spirit of National Socialism, of slavery, of war, and of racial hatred. The Popular Olympiad of Barcelona, on the contrary, wishes to defend the true Olympic spirit, which recognizes the equality of races and peoples and considers peace to be the best guarantee for the healthy education of athletes and the youth of all nations," stated the official program. A program with sixteen sports, such as athletics, boxing, football, cycling, rugby, tennis, Basque pelota, basketball, freestyle wrestling, and chess, always emphasizing that women could participate. Furthermore, athletes were allowed to participate representing stateless nations, such as Catalonia, the Basque Country, Alsace, Palestine, and Morocco, then controlled by France. Jewish athletes who had fled Germany were also invited.

The press and conservative parties attacked the competition, saying it would be a failure because there would be no athletes of level, as the best athletes of the moment preferred to go to Berlin. In Madrid, this competition was defined as "separatist" because it allowed Spanish citizens to compete as Catalans, Galicians, or Basques. But Catalan nationalism was also not happy: the role of the Catalan language was minor, as it was sidelined by Castilian. Despite everything, about 6,000 athletes from 23 international delegations responded to the call. The largest delegation was the French one, with 1,500 athletes. The athletes were housed at the Olympic Hotel in Plaça Espanya and in improvised dormitories at the Olympic Stadium.

The inauguration was scheduled for July 19, 1936, at the Montjuïc Olympic Stadium, where popular culture groups and athletes were to parade before the President of the Generalitat, Lluís Companys, with an official anthem that had been composed by Josep Maria de Sagarra with music by the German composer Hanns Eisler. The lyrics said, "It is not out of hatred, it is not out of war that we come to fight from every land; under the blue sky, the only word that suits us is a cry of joy: peace." The inaugural concert was to be conducted by Pau Casals, with the soprano Conxita Badia. But on that July 19, war broke out.

The shots and explosions surprised Casals while he was doing the last rehearsal at the Greek Theatre. And the athletes, at the Olympic Hotel. The American gymnast Bernard R. Danchik, a clergyman from New York who was practicing gymnastics, wrote: "There is fire from rifles and pistols, machine guns, bombs and mortars. They don't do things by halves here... We were locked in the hotel, and every time we wanted to stick our heads out the window, we heard shots. In the end, they let us out when things calmed down relatively. We collected bullets from the ground and took photos. Churches were burning all over the city".

Given the development of events, the Olympics were eventually suspended and most of the athletes returned home as best they could, but many decided to stay and fight for the Republic. In fact, those athletes would be, in part, the seed from which the International Brigades would emerge. They were athletes like the Swiss swimmer Clara Thalmann, who joined Durruti's anarchist column, later moving to the POUM. Thalmann and her husband participated in the May Events, were arrested by the Trotskyists, and ended up fighting against the Nazis in France. They survived. On the other hand, the American wrestling coach Alfred Chick Chakin was shot by the Francoists when he was captured near Caspe in 1938. The German photographer Hans Gutmann also stayed, who had come to document the Olympics and ended up fighting on the Aragon front. Gutmann left a legacy of photos of both the preparation for the Olympics and the war. In fact, he took one of the most famous images of the conflict: that of the young militiawoman Marina Ginestà, 17 years old, on the terrace of the Hotel Colón, with a rifle on her back. Ginestà, incidentally, was also supposed to participate in the Olympics as an athlete in the 80 and 600 meter races, and in the long jump. 90 years ago, sport ceased to be important.