However inane they may be, the youthful scrawls of a famed artist can usually be sold for big prices. Sincere artists usually object to this mercenary process. Recently Pablo Picasso was astonished to observe on the walls of Paris dealers some 400 of his works, most of which had been executed before the age of puberty. Excited dilettantes were lauding even the most execrable of the daubs. Revolted, Artist Picasso charged last week that the material had been obtained from his mother in Barcelona under false pretenses, filed a complaint charging fraud against persons unnamed, caused the Galeries Georges Bernheim and the Galeries Zak to be invaded by gendarmes who removed the offensive juvenilia. [TIME dated 1930/05/19. Actual date uncertain]
Año: 1930
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Dos mil niños paralizados por insolación en una comunión másiva en la Exposición
One broiling Barcelona day last week 30,000 children marshaled by hundreds of priests gathered for an open air prayer festival at which it is a local custom to pray masked. Many and many a child sneaked off the sweltering mask during the long prayer, but all remained devoutly motionless kneeling under a grilling sun. When the prayer ended 28,000 tots rose and prepared to march away but 2,000 continued to kneel as though stupefied or paralyzed in the attitude of adoration. Doctors pronounced them sunstruck. Several hundred had to be rushed to hospitals, all were expected to recover.
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Se suicida Joan Gamper, fundador del F. C. Barcelona
Juan Gamper
Profunda pena ha causado en Barcelona la muerte … del prestigioso deportista, fundador del F. C. Barcelona, don Juan Gamper. Sorpresa dolorosa para todos quienes fuimos sus amigos de largos años, paja los que sé interesaban en las cosas de nuestro deporte e incluso para quienes no conocieron íntimamente las preciadas cualidades del amigo desaparecido, causó la infausta nueva de su inesperada desaparición.
Gamper era una verdadera institución en nuestra ciudad. Sus dotes de clarividencia, en tiempos en que el fútbol pudo considerarse como cosa exótica y ridicula, sembraron la semilla que luego había de fructificar en la vitalidad del fútbol da hoy, y especialmente del club que tanto amó y al que dedicara loinejor de sus energías, el F. C. Barcelona, por él fundado junto can un puñado de entusiastas.
La historia del club azul grana, que es tanto como decir la historia del fútbol catalán, va inseparablemente unida al nombre de la personalidad de Juan Gamper, cuya pérdida lamentamos y cuyas iniciativas fructíferas nos recuerdan tantas fechas memorables y gloriosas en el terreno internacional y en las lides nacionales y regionales.
Alejado momentáneamente del deporte lo seguía muy de cerca, porque su dinamismo y sus sentimientos eran los de un deportista nato. Cuando por razones de todos sabidas hubo de alejarse de la presidencia del Barcelona y trasladarse a su patria nativa, Suiza, continuó dando su consejo, prodigando su concurso y ofreciendo sus estímulos. Al regresar continuó haciendo acto de presencia encuantas manifestaciones deportivas de algún relieve se celebraban, con la misma pasión yel mismo fervor de sus años mozos, porque Gampjer, vehemente y emprendedor, parecía tener el secreto de la eterna juventud.
En los últimos años no dejó el ejercicio activo del deporte, entregándose al golf, y sus mayores satisfacciones las tuvo viendo a sus hijos obtener repetidas victorias en el campo de la natación.
Desaparece una figura que ha sido preeminente durante más de un cuarto de siglo en nuestro mundo deportivo y a la que debemos sin duda buena parte del auge actual. El Barcelona, su club, había no ha mucho homenajeado a su fundador Juan Gamper, pero el mejor premio a sus constantes esfuerzos en pro de nuestro deporte y a su identificación con nuestras cosas — Gamper no se recataba antes bien se enorgullecía de llamarse catalán adoptivo — era la estima general que se le profesaba y el respeto unánime que había sabido grangearse.
Con Gamper, risueño, optimista, caballeroso y cordial, perdemos a algo típico y a un amigo noble y leal, y su pérdida nos ha afligido hondamente. A todos sus deudos, en especial a su señora esposa, a sus hijos, a su señora hermana — que tanto estimaba a Gamper y que al recibir en Zurich la infausta nueva habrá sufrido un rudo golpe — a sus íntimos todos, acompañárnosles en la honda pena que les ha producido la dolorosa pérdida.
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El F. C. Barcelona ha dispuesto que la bandera del club ondee a media asta tanto en el domicilio social como en el campo del «Sol de Baix», cerrándose hoy las oficinas en señal de duelo.
Tan pronto como se supo la noticia acudieron al domicilio del finado todos los directivos y ex directivos del Barcelona que se encuentran en esta ciudad, haciendo lo mismo diversos jugadores y personalidades dal sport, representantes de los clubs, federativos, etc.
Reunida ayer urgentemente la Directiva azul grana acordó que le dieran oficialmente el pésame a la familia los directivos señores Roses, Zapater y Cabestany. Asimismo se acordó que anoche velaran el cadáver los funcionarios del club, con quienes se alternaron algunos significados barcelonistas y directivos.
El acto del entierro está anunciado para esta mañana [día 31], a las once, en el domicilio del finado, calle de Gerona, 4.
El cadáver recibirá sepultura en el Cementerio Nuevo.
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Partido boxeo Primo Carnera – Paulino Uzcudun
From 75,000 people—reputedly the biggest crowd that ever watched a sporting event in Spain—a roar went up. Paulino Uzcudun, Basque woodchopper who for several years has been an exacting and dangerous trial horse for U. S. heavyweights, rushed out of his corner in Montjuich Stadium, Barcelona, and tried to hit Primo Camera, Italian Brobdingnag. His swing was short. Camera stretched out a long left hand and set him back on his heels. Squat, hairy-chested, his gold teeth gleaming in his dwarfish face, Paulino in his perpetual crouch, with his elbows swinging, resembled some kind of beetle that Camera, punching almost vertically, was trying to crush. He sidestepped many of Camera’s left leads but could not get out of the way of the ponderous rights aimed at his body. Camera could slap down his guard and plank a punch over. He did not seem at first to be trying very hard. In the eighth round the referee warned him for hitting low, but by that time Paulino was bleeding from the mouth and right eye. When the decision was properly given to Camera, the crowd, not knowing much about fighting, but liking Paulino for his nerve and nationality, booed heartily. [Actually «Carnera». TIME dated 1930/12/08]
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La vuelta de Andrés Nin desde Moscú, entrismo trotskista
In September 1930, [Andrés] Nin returned [from Moscow] to Barcelona… [Joaquín] Maurín hoped that he would enter the new party [Bloque Obrero y Campesino]. But Nin, with all the friendship that linked him to Maurín and the sympathy he felt for the new party, was too closely tied to Trotsky. The latter demanded that his Spanish followers preserver their identity and continue working within the official P.C.E., under the banner of the «Communist Opposition.»
On October 23 1930, Nin wrote to Trotsky his impressions following his return to Spain. Excerpts from their correspondence, as translated and circulated by Trotsky’s «secretariat,» included Nin’s observations:
Now we have: 1) the official [Communist] party [PCE], which has no effective force and no authority among the masses; 2) the Communist federations of Catalonia and Valencia, which have been excluded from the party and which, in reality, together with the most influential groups of [Asturias] and a few other places, constitute in fact an independent party; 3) the Catalan Communist Party [Partit Comunista Català], which has a good elite leadership, counts on a certain influence among the dock workers of Barcelona and dominates the workers’ movement in Lérida; and 4) the Left Opposition (Trotskyist) [Izquierda Comunista de España]. The latter has no force in Catalonia.
A week later (November 12), Nin wrote to Trotsky regarding Maurín, who, «notwithstanding his hesitations, is very intelligent, and above all, a very honest comrade.» «La Batalla» seemed to him to be «confusionist» and he hoped Maurín would soon become a Trotskyist…
At the end of December 1930, Nin also found himself in the Model Prison, arrested after the general strike in Barcelona…, and he wrote … an article for «L’Hora,» in which he defended the same point of view as Maurín on the necessity of the proletariat completing the bourgeois-democratic revolution.
Nin found himself … between a rock and a hard place: he wanted to enter the party that was being set up, and he knew that within it he would find a good place, but at the same time, out of loyalty to Trotsky, he felt this entry should be undertaken to conquer the new party and convert it into a Trotskyist organization.