Spain's Other Olympics

The various events taking place this year in Spain are the most explicit sign yet of the country's full integration into the European club, seventeen years after Franco's death. One of these events, the World Olympics in Barcelona, will be the centre of attention for a vast international television audience, thus laying Spain open to the gaze of the world. It is timely then to recall the events surrounding another Spanish Olympic games, again in Barcelona, which marked the very eve of the closure of Spain to the outside world for so many years.