Soller And Barcelona: Where Basketball Started

Six years ago, I interviewed the then new mayor of Alcudia. Of various questions I put to him, I didn't ask about his nickname - "Coriós" (curious). I guessed it had come about because of an innate curiosity, as in wanting to know, but it could have been for another reason. Miquel Llompart was and is very tall. As far as I know, he is the only basketball player (one of a high standard) to ever be a mayor in Mallorca.

There shouldn't be anything curious, though, with being both tall and a basketball player. One of Spain's best known is the Palma-born Rudy Fernández. There shouldn't also be anything curious about basketball in Mallorca. It is, as with the rest of Spain, immensely popular. And yet, I'm guessing that it is a sport which does fly somewhat below the radar of many, especially the foreign communities with greater interests in other sports.

Mallorca's leading basketball team is Palma Air Europa. It competes in the Liga Española de Baloncesto (LEB) Oro, the second division behind La Liga ACB, Spain's premier basketball league. This is the name that the team has for purposes of sponsorship, i.e. that of Air Europa. Its real name is CB Bahía San Agustín, which has its own curious past. In 1972, Father Manuel Carreño founded the Club de Básquet San Agustín, which was a school team. Some ten years later, another team was founded by the Bahía printing company. Both grew and eventually, in 2007, they merged to become CB Bahía San Agustín.  

The history of basketball on the island goes back to much earlier times than Father Manuel's school team. The generally accepted version of events is that it all had to do with two brothers - Pere and Joan Reynés - sons of a couple from Soller who had moved to France. When they all returned, in 1931, basketball came with them. A year later - on 8 May, 1932 - the first ever basketball game in Mallorca took place: it was on the Camp d'en Maiol in Soller, which by then had been a football ground for almost ten years.

In 1942, again in Soller, the Congregation of Marian Fathers at the school of the Sacred Hearts (Sagrats Cors) introduced basketball to the school's sports curriculum, and ultimately Joventut Mariana was to become the leading basketball team in the Balearics, even including American military personnel stationed on the island who were employed at the Puig Maria base.

It had taken some years, though, for the basketball bug, courtesy of the Reynés brothers, to catch on in Mallorca. More than twenty years before, Barcelona had been introduced to the sport. The founder of basketball in Spain (though this is disputed) was one Eladi Homs i Oller (pictured here). A teacher and thinker about education, in 1907 he was given a grant by the town hall in Barcelona to go to the United States in order to research new systems of teaching.

While he was in the US, and in Chicago in particular, he came across basketball, a sport which at the time was unknown in Spain. Homs returned to Barcelona in 1910 and at the Escuela Vallparadís in Terrassa in the Barcelona province, some twenty kilometres from the centre of the city, baskets were put up in the school courtyard. It is reckoned that it was 1912 when the first actual game was played, albeit that it was confined to the school itself: there weren't any other schools to play against.

The school was to close in 1915, there being no evidence to suggest that basketball had caught on. And so one comes to Father Eusebio Millán. He had been a missionary in Cuba, where he would have encountered not only American soldiers but also basketball. It is now debated whether there was any link between Homs and Father Eusebio, with the weight of argument tending towards there not having been and Father Eusebio giving his first lessons on basketball in the courtyard of the Pías de San Anton school in Barcelona in 1921.

There is a further version of events that "basket-ball" was originally played by women. Indeed, there is a newspaper report from 1912 which spoke of a "new sport" played by "good-looking sportswomen" at the Instituto Kinesiterápico in Barcelona. This was in fact the first real gym in Spain. Whether Homs had been instrumental in this game is also not known.

Anyway, whoever it actually was who should be honoured with having introduced basketball to Spain, it was to take its time coming over to Mallorca. And by the time that the brothers Reynés returned to Soller - in fact in the very year that they returned - a basketball team was founded on the mainland. Not in Barcelona but in Madrid. Real Madrid's basketball team remains the dominant force in Spanish basketball, and one of its star players is Mallorca's own Rudy Fernández.

Basket Case

You may have noticed that this blog has been an Olympics-free zone, though yesterday's finishing offer might have given a clue that today we would be wandering a bit further than the local Chinese. Of course I could say that I had intended that the blog would remain five rings short of an Olympic logo if only as a personal minor crusade against the whole pompous farce that the games have become especially in the hands of the Chinese who have elevated their political dimension beyond anything Hitler had in mind or also the Stasi with its steroid-fed East German athletes. By the way, if any of you are interested, I can relate the story of one such athlete who told me the whole tale of the discovery of steroids in his food, the consequent heart problems and the period during which his father "disappeared", but it's probably not for this blog.

Well I could say all that, but I won't.

Unlike other major events, notably the international footy championships and of course Eurovision, which have adorned the blog in the past, the Olympics in truth seemed to offer little in the way of a Mallorcan or even Spanish dimension, apart from the odd cyclist being caught in a doping scandal or some such or Rafa Christmas winning the tennis; nothing new there. But then, damn me, along come both "The Bulletin" and those old scoundrels of Spanish basketball to spoil the silence. In the case of the first-mentioned, they have been making play of the fact that the entire British Olympic squad (Team GB if one must), or at least that's how it seems, has in some way been trained in Mallorca, thus meaning ... er, well that they have trained in Mallorca. Actually to be fair I think it was just that girl who can swim a bit and that Bilbo Baggins bloke who rides a bike and who has presumably been one causing potential traffic flashpoints in and around Pollensa. Anyway, this was not really the point of bowing to pressure and finally raising the Olympic flame over the blog. Oh no; it was and is of course the Spanish basketball teams and Sid Lowe of "The Guardian".

In case you have missed all this, Lowe, who lives in Madrid and works not just for "The Guardian" but also Spanish media such as the La Sexta TV channel, unearthed an advert featuring the Spanish basketball teams and penned a short piece that appeared in the newspaper. Just goes to show that even small items in the press can cause one hell of a fuss. Now Lowe, who knows a fair bit about Spanish culture as well as its sport, is nevertheless not one to necessarily stint in taking the piss, especially out of football, or to keeping schtum when it comes to more sensitive issues. This despite his taking the Spanish media shilling.

The advert that has caused the rumpus shows the men's and women's basketball teams doing a slitty-eyed gesture. Personally I don't find this offensive. Puerile yes, but I can see why some might find it offensive, the Chinese for instance. So Sid duly pointed out that although no offence was intended it might have been taken and that the advert should be considered in the context not just of Madrid's desire to stage the 2016 Olympics but also Spain's recent well-publicised racism in sport allegations - Lewis Hamilton, the England football team and the Aragones Thierry Henry remark. At this point the "mierda" started to hit the fan. I won't bother to go into detail as you can read the link for yourselves, but Lowe was right to defend himself by saying that nowhere had he accused anyone of racism. One does suspect, as so often with these things, that no one bothered to actually read the original or if they did to understand its tone.

The story has been interesting to follow on the blogs, no more so than one from "The New York Times" which has offered some further insight into the whole matter. While it reports that the Spanish basketball team was booed in Beijing, it also points out that the team has a long-standing sponsorship arrangement with a Chinese footwear company (Li-Ning) and that the ad was a sort of gesture that was "appropriate and affectionate" - "a wink of the sponsor", as it is described.

Appropriate or not, one suspects that the matter has been blown up out of all proportion. As Lowe admits, it partly reflects the hyper-PCness of the British, something that the Spanish don't quite get, and for which - quite frankly - we should be grateful. But how many Brits can say they've never done a slitty-eyed gesture? I know I have. There again, apparently the Chinese have not taken offence, or they hadn't until up popped Rod Liddle in "The Sunday Times" to say that the advert has not gone down well in Beijing. He did rather steal my thunder as I had been lining up this piece with a conclusion about the fact that Spain and its basketball teams have form - i.e. the 2000 Paralympics gold-medal winners being found to have ten out of twelve players who were fully mentally able. Well that's how I've still decided to conclude it. And that was a disgrace. This little carry-on? I leave it up to you to decide.

Links:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/aug/11/olympicsbasketball.olympics20081
(The original article with the advert.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/15/olympicsandthemedia.pressandpublishing
(Lowe's response to the rumpus.)

http://olympics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/spanish-ad-spurs-charges-of-racism/
(New York Times blog.)


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Marx Brothers. Here is the first part of the film; others are available as links - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDJgPCNzt5E. Today's title - American rock group, partly a colour.

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