Olympic Museum

Today for my sports class, we took a field trip to the Olympic Sports museum. It was actually pretty cool. They have some really interesting exhibits on sports in general, like which sports are popular in Spain and how they got that way. Then they also had tons of stuff on the Olympics in Barcelona in 1992. The museum is located up at the top of one of the hills that surrounds Barcelona (Montjuic) and is right near the Olympic stadium (which we also went inside--see the pictures) and some of the other venues for the 92 games. We are spending a fair amount of time in class talking about how important the 92 games were for sports in Barcelona. Apparently, Spain in general was a very conservative society when it came to sports. Women, for the most part, did not play sports at all before the games, and the Spanish were able to play many new sports because venues (for sports like baseball) were built for the games. I find all this fascinating.

Observation of the day: Barcelona vs. Madrid (sticking somewhat with the sports theme)
I like to think I have learned a few things in my time here so far, and one is that Barcelona hates Madrid (and the rest of Spain almost as much). We talked about this in class, and it stems all the way back from when Franco took power. Catalonia (the state that Barcelona is in) has always been fairly different from the rest of Spain and proud of it, but Franco didn't want anything that could potentially undermine his regime. His government (in Madrid of course) was ruthless towards Catalonia and Barcelona (where the main resistance was), so the people of Barcelona have this strong sense of local pride because they were persecuted so much. Also, Franco's favorite football club was Real Madrid, and during his time in power, Real Madrid was given all the money and favors from the government that none of the other clubs got, which has led to one of the most intense rivalries in sports now (between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona). Our teacher told us that because of all this local pride, the people of Catalonia and Barcelona won't even root for the Spanish in the World Cup, unless of course it is for a player from the region. I was trying to think of something like this happening in the States, and the closest I could come was Texas. It's not quite to the same degree, but there is a huge sense of pride in their state. Anyway, maybe you all will find this as interesting as me. If not, sorry for wasting your time with this post. . .