The other “People’s Olympiad”: The Nou Barris neighbourhood of Barcelona, November 1973

Abstract

Seen from a certain historical perspective, Barcelona’s urban social movements played a major role in securing quality-of-life improvements for citizens in the final years of Franco’s dictatorship (1939-1975) and during Spain’s transition towards democracy (1975-1982). Among their demands, those of a sport-related nature became more and more prominent as other identified shortcomings were gradually resolved. One of the first actions of this type was the ‘People’s Olympiad’, an event held in late 1973 to demand public sports facilities in the Nou Barris neighbourhood of the city. Based on an analysis of primary and secondary documentary sources, the aim of this article is to examine the reach of this event as a sporting demonstration, and to assess its implications as an instrument of demand-making and of social mobilisation in one of the city’s peripheral neighbourhoods. This event is a good example of the social reality during late Francoism in Barcelona’s peripheral areas. It served to demand improvements to services in Nou Barris while fostering the construction of collective identities.