Reposted from Anti-Fascist Information Bulletin...
FASCIST'S RISE TO OLYMPIC PEAK
_________________________________________________________________
THE TIMES
Foreign News
Thursday, 28 January 1999
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk:80/news/pages/tim/99/01/28/
A SINGLE photograph taken some 30 years ago speaks
eloquently of the path followed by Juan Antonio Samaranch in his
rise to the heights of an Olympic movement shown to be riddled
with corruption.
The 1967 photograph depicts the President of the
International Olympic Committee, then 46, dressed in the uniform
of Spain's Falangist Party as he is sworn in as a member of the
national council of General Franco's fascist-inspired Movimiento
Nacional. It marks just one moment in an unstoppable rise as an
apparatchik in the Franco dictatorship.
It is also a moment conspicuously absent from the
biographies of Senor Samaranch distributed by Olympic
headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. Yet it was this career as
a servant of Franco that would propel him on to the Olympic
committee and, eventually, to its presidency.
Senor Samaranch began this career during the Spanish Civil
War when he was drafted into the government forces fighting
Franco's uprising. The young man deserted from his Red Cross unit
and went into hiding in his home city of Barcelona. His family
claimed later that he had done undercover work for Franco's
troops as they marched towards Catalonia. When Franco's forces
took over in Barcelona, Senor Samaranch pursued a double career
as a politician and sports administrator inside the regime.
The smooth Catalan, whose wealthy family owned textile
mills, proved expert at the mixture of obeisance to the regime
and political manoeuvring necessary to progress through the
ranks. He got himself appointed first to the city council, then
to the provincial council and, eventually, to Franco's
rubber-stamp parliament in Madrid.
He joined the Traditional Spanish Falangist Party in 1955.
Stiff-armed fascist salutes and the chanting of the Falangist
anthem "Cara al Sol" became an essential part of his career
progress. Letters to superiors were signed: "Always at your
orders. I salute with my arm held high."
He became junior minister for sport and, as head of the
Spanish Olympic Committee, at the Mexico City Games in 1968,
exhorted athletes to show "we Spaniards are becoming a more
virile and potent race".
By the time Franco died and democracy came to Spain in 1975,
he was the regime's boss in Barcelona and an IOC vice-president.
He had also increased his personal wealth by, among other things,
building ugly high-rise flats for immigrants on Barcelona's
outskirts.
After the dictator's death, protesters took to the city
streets shouting: "Out with Samaranch." He was soon dispatched to
Moscow to become Spain's Ambassador and, three years later, took
over the IOC presidency. Six years after that Barcelona was
awarded the 1992 Games.
Spain has been happy to draw a veil over Senor Samaranch's
past. For many years he was the most prominent Spaniard outside
Spain and many, especially fellow Catalans, see him as a man who
successfully made the transition from dictatorship to democracy.
Shortly after those Games, King Juan Carlos awarded him the title
of marques. He likes to be referred to as "His Excellency".
He became enraged when a CBS television journalist started
grilling him about his fascist days during last year's Winter
Games in Nagano, Japan. He wanted the interview rerun, but CBS
refused.
The incident helped to reveal that he had no regrets. "I
said I was with Franco. As well as 40 million Spaniards," he
said, wrongly assuming that most Spaniards had supported the
dictator. "I am very proud of my past and what I did for my
country."
Copyright 1999 Times Newspapers Ltd.
*****
