Olympic Ring

This guide to the Olympic Ring in Barcelona opens on July 18, 1936, as six thousand athletes from forty-nine countries gathered here for the People's Olympiad, a rebel games organized to boycott Hitler's Berlin Olympics, with cellist Pau Casals rehearsing for an opening ceremony to be led by Catalonia's president, Lluís Companys. That same morning, Franco's army rose against the Republic, and borders slammed shut before the ceremony could happen. At least two hundred athletes, including a Swiss militant named Clara Thalmann, stayed in the city anyway, trading running shoes for rifles.