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Part of the book series: Mega Event Planning ((MEGAEP))

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Abstract

The Popular Olympics are often characterized as a part of the Workers’ Sport Movement; however, this overlooks the unique circumstances that created a united Popular Front which supported and would have attended these games. This chapter outlines the Spanish and Catalan political situations as well as approaches to sport and nationalism which made it possible to host a global mega-event with less than three months to prepare. Concepts of popular sport, the Popular Front, and Catalan nationalism are explained, and a brief narrative of the history of the Spanish Second Republic will acquaint the reader with the various parties and crises leading up to July 1936.

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Notes

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    La Rambla, March 27, 1931.

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    See, for example, Jeroni Morages. “La Moral i La Natció.” Natació, July 1933.

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    Fallon and Bell cite Cañardo’s own re telling of this story to the publication Dicen in 1978 Lucy Fallon and Adrian Bell, Viva La Vuelta! (Norwich: Mousehold Press, 2005) pp. 20–21.

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    COOP. “Manifest, Programa,” 1936.

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    Maria Ginesta, the miliciana famously photographed by Juan Guzmán, had been a competitive hurdler earlier in the 1930s.

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Stout, J. (2020). Spain and Sport in the 1930s. In: The Popular Front and the Barcelona 1936 Popular Olympics. Mega Event Planning. Palgrave Pivot, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8071-6_1

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