Roberto Aguirrezabala publishes ‘We Came for Games’, an artist’s book that analyses one of the most important acts of peaceful international anti-fascist resistance of the 20th century, the 1936 People’s Olympiad in Barcelona

We Came for Games is a humanist project that advocates equality, respect and solidarity between people and cultures. It analyses a very important international event at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War to explore how the action of ordinary civilians and the organisation of a spontaneous militarisation constituted the seed of the future International Brigades. This artist’s book is set in Barcelona in mid-July 1936, when everything was ready for the start of the People’s Olympiad. It was intended to be the biggest international anti-fascist resistance event ever held. The same year, the official Olympic Games were to be held in Berlin with Hitler in power, a shameful act of Nazi whitewashing. But the Catalan capital had been planning the extraordinary boycott of the German Olympics for some time. It was to be a great celebration of peace and harmony between peoples, combining sport and regional folklore in an absolutely unique open call.

More than six thousand athletes worldwide gathered in the city, twice the number that would later go to Germany. The Barcelona Games intended to represent everything that the Berlin Games did not. With a focus on respect for equality of origin, religion, gender and sexual orientation. In short, Barcelona undoubtedly represented the Olympic spirit. Unfortunately, however, the protest games were never held. Civil war broke out in Spain the very day before the opening ceremony, due to a fascist coup d’état. The streets spontaneously became a fervent battlefield. Hundreds of young sportsmen and women, having just arrived in the city, decided to take up arms to defend the Republic from the rebels instead of returning to our countries. This concentration of foreigners was the seed for the International Brigades, when they were disbanded in 1938.

This artist’s book is created as an object. It is a piece that shows an experience of both visual and physical narrative, through the touch of textures and materials. The outer cover is made with thick jute fabric reminiscent of the sandbags used in the construction of trenches on the war front. On this rough jute texture the title print contrasts in a soft yellow velvet flock. The spine is an original fragment of a militiaman’s blue overalls from the time of the civil war. The exterior of the book is completed with several sewn linen cords, forming the colours of the Republican flag.

Inside the book, the story is structured in three chapters that unfold sequentially without interruption. The book begins with a selection of personal stories of athletes who came to the city of Barcelona to take part in these alternative games but who, after the beginning of the war in Spain, decided to stay in the country and take up arms to fight. This is the case of the Swiss swimmer Clara Thalman, the British artist Felicia Browne who came with the Hungarian doctor and journalist Edit Bone to watch as spectators and finally stayed to fight. Also the footballers Imre Jacobi and Emanuel Mink arrived, Hungarian and Polish respectively. The Dutch Fanny Schoonheyt was working in the organization of the Olympics and given her skill with weapons and her military abilities she fought on the front and after being wounded she was promoted to Officer of the Republic and director of the first military training camp. Also the former boxer and coach of the American Olympic team Abraham Chakin joined the International Brigades. This chapter is completed by the Australian writer Aileen Palmer, who fought at the front until 1938, and Jaccod Menchen, a great unknown who is considered the first person killed during the fighting in the streets of Barcelona. Like Jaccod, some of these people lost their lives at the front and those who survived continued fighting in the resistance during the Second World War.

Throughout this first chapter, several photographs are shown transversally, comparing the official 1936 Olympics in Berlin with the streets of Barcelona in July of that same year after the fascist uprising. The photographs of the chaos in the streets of the Catalan capital, full of combatants parading with weapons or fighting from the trenches, are printed on foldouts on translucent paper that physically cover and hide the scenes of the German games. It is necessary to lift the Catalan images to uncover what would happen a few days later in Berlin.

The second chapter is made up of two types of photographs printed on very thick, stone-grey paper. Here we can see portraits of republican militiamen rescued from original negatives of the period, from an old photographic studio. These combatants face images of sculptures by the German artist Arno Breker, a sympathiser of the National Socialist ideology and a regular collaborator of Hitler since the 1936 Olympics. Breker’s pompous neoclassical style, the exaltation of the heroism of his figures and the nakedness of the muscled bodies in full combat contrast with the calm, natural beauty and sensitivity in the portraits of the militiamen. Here toxic masculinity runs like poison throughout the chapter, a faithful reflection of the violent era it represents.

When we reach the third chapter of the book, the party breaks out. It is a utopia, the dream of the People’s Olympics that could not be, but which we can now celebrate. Old photographs from the first third of the 20th century with people training amateur sports appear alongside images of folklore from different regions and countries throughout the narrative. A replica of the original entrance to the People’s Olympiad invites you to enter the Estadi de Montjuic. Also included are facsimiles of the organisation’s official manifesto and the announcement of the programme of activities for the week of the games. In addition, Aguirrezabala has taken a series of photographs for this chapter inspired by the covers of the brochures for the 1936 German games. In those booklets, athletes appeared practising various Olympic sports, and in the new images created for this book, the same posture is reproduced, on the same intense yellow background, but featuring militiamen and women of the Republic holding weapons of the time, stepping on the emblematic tiles of the beginning of the century of the streets of Barcelona. Seen together, these photographs show that the characters appear to dance in gentle, harmonious and rhythmic movements. The end of the book thus becomes a party, an actual utopia that didn’t come to pass, one that we can now imagine.

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Credits

Concept, editing, design, photographs, text and selection of historical images: Roberto Aguirrezabala
English, French, German, Catalan and Basque translations: Interwords Global Service, Izaskun Altube
Printing: Artefacto
Hand bookbinding: Roberto Aguirrezabala

All photographs of Barcelona in July 1936 and images of civil war posters have been loaned by CRAI Biblioteca Pavelló de la República, Universitat de Barcelona and the Centro Documental de la Memoria Histórica de Salamanca, Ministerio de Cultura, Spain.

The photographic series in this book has been produced with the support of the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sport with the collaboration of the Bilbao Arte Foundation.

Description

Print run: Limited edition of 88 + 6 artist’s proofs (numbered and signed)
Measurements: 18.2 × 23.6 × 3 cm
Languages: Español, English, Français, Deutschen, Català, Euskara
Pages: 192 pages with 22 fold-out pages.
Inserts: Entrance to the Montjuic stadium, Manifest of the People’s Olympiad and program for the call for the People’s Olympiad.
Number of photographs: 140
Papers: Pergamenata Bianco 90 gr, Arena Smooth Natural 140 gr, Materica Clay 250 gr and Arena Bulk Ivory 80 gr.
Cover: The spine of the book is a piece of original blue overalls from a Republican fighters in the Spanish Civil War. Thick jute fabric outer cover with a screen printing process with thermal transfer of a flocked for the title in yellow.
Binding: Binding in six pieces with two covering materials and intermediate flat spine. Sewn with linen thread and six additional stitching on the right with reverse opening of the booklets leaving 12 threads of 30 cm loose. Integrated printed endpapers.
Year: 2025

Biography of Roberto Aguirrrezabala

Roberto Aguirrezabala holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from the University of the Basque Country. His multidisciplinary training in audiovisuals, new technologies, sculpture and painting has led him to develop photographic work of an essay nature, a synthesis between documentary and fiction, which coexists with intervened objects, installation and drawing to explore the conflicts, both of identity as social and political, of the individual through historical memory. He has published seven artist books: We Came for Games (2025), Hidden Book (2023), Samizdat (2022), Two Thousand Words (2021), Fascism + Apocalyptic (2020), Antimanifesto (2020) and War Edition (2019, as well as the monograph Entropy (2016). His current research in publishing focuses on in limited editions made entirely by hand, where the book object concept is the fundamental axis.

In the course of his artistic career he has won several awards: 3rd Prize Winner of the Photobook Award EI2022 – Encontros da Imagem, Braga, Portugal; VI City of Móstoles Artist Book Award 2021; Montehermoso Award in the Viphoto Festival 2018; First prize V Premio Ankaria Foundation 2018; Acquisition Award at the XX Sala El Brocense Plastic Arts Prize 2017; Photographer of the Year in the International Photography Awards IPA 2017, Spanish edition; Special mention PHotoEspaña, Photography Award, ENAIRE Foundation 2017; First Prize Best Work of net.art X Canariasmediafest, Festival Internacional de Vídeo y Multimedia de Canarias 2002; Award to the revelation artist in Festival de Vídeo de Navarra 1998, among others. And the artist books he has published have recently been recognized as finalists at festivals: Open Submission 2023 de Belfast Photo Festival. Belfast, Northern Ireland; Les Rencontres de la Photographie D’Arles 2024, 2022 and 2021; Lucie Photobook Prize 2022 and 2021, Los Ángeles, EE.UU; Shortlisted at the Singapore International Photography Festival 2024 and 2022 (SIPF); Athens Photo Festival 2022, Greece; Festival PhotoBookWeek Aarhus 2021, Dinamarca; Finalist in the Best Photography Book of the Year Award, PHotoESPAÑA 2019. His work has been supported by numerous grants such as: Plastic Arts Basque Government Grant 2023, 2022, 2019 and 2018 in the Publications modality; Grants for artistic research, creation and production in the field of visual arts, Ministry of Culture, Spain 2023, 2022 and 2020; Grant for Creation by VEGAP 2020; Bilbao Art District 2018; Plastic Arts Basque Government Grants 2016, 2010; Bilbao Arte Foundation Grants 2015, 2010; Generación 2001, Caja Madrid Grant and others. He has held several solo exhibitions, including particularly: War Museum, Montehermoso Cultural Center, Vitoria, 2019; Entropy, Bilbao Arte Foundation, 2016; Roberto Aguirrezabala, net.art 1998-2008, Centro Huarte de Arte Contemporáneo, curated by Roberta Bosco and Stefano Caldana, 2008. His work has been seen in numerous international group exhibitions such as: The discreet charm of technology. Arts in Spain, 2008, MEIAC in Spain, ZKM in Germany, Instituto Tomie Ohtake in São Paulo, Brasil; net.art in the Spanish Pavilion, Universal Exposition Hannover 2000; 12º Rencontres Internationales 2007, Paris, Berlin, Madrid.

We Came for Games, 2025