Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium

This guide to Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium in Barcelona opens in 1936, when six thousand athletes from twenty-two countries filled these stands for the People's Olympiad, a rival event to Hitler's Berlin Games, the night before Franco's generals rose against the Republic. You'll hear how the stadium became a refugee shelter as the Spanish Civil War tore through the city, and about Lluís Companys, the Catalan president it's named for, who was later captured and shot at Montjuïc Castle behind you. Listen for how close the opening ceremony came to happening, on the very morning the war began.