Michael Ortiz’s research project will situate the People’s Olympiad and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War within a transnational history of the year 1936 in Europe. The People’s Olympiad was an alternative Olympic games organized in Barcelona as a protest against the 1936 “Nazi Olympics” in Berlin. With attendees from more than twenty-two countries across Europe, the People’s Olympiad articulated a vision in which anti-fascist sport could reinvigorate a Europe beset by crisis. Unfortunately, only days before the games were set to begin, Spain erupted in civil war. Although many athletes fled Barcelona, more than two-hundred enlisted in the famed
International Brigades. Ortiz’s project will examine these athletes’ understandings of the crises of 1936, together with their experiences of the People’s Olympiad and the Spanish Civil War.