Rusty crampons, sealskins, pedigree ice axes, and the walkie-talkie through which Josep Manuel Anglada, Jordi Pons and Emili Civis reported on April 29, 1974 that they had completed the Annapurna East, the first eight thousand in history that a Spanish expedition managed to step on, are some of the objects that are part of the exhibition to commemorate the centenary of the Federation of Hiking Entities of Catalonia (FEEC), at the Palau Robert in Barcelona. The Covid-19 has also mortgaged the events that had been programmed and that have had to be limited to the sample that passes through the last 100 years of Catalan hiking.
The exhibition ‘100 years doing FEEC’ opened yesterday at the Palau Robert
The ‘gathering’ of Sant Llorenç del Munt gave shape to the newly created League of Hiking Societies
The embryo of the federation is in the gatherings. The one in Sant Miquel del Fai, from 1918, brought together more than a thousand hikers representing a hundred entities. But it was the one in Sant Llorenç del Munt, in May 2020, which would shape the newly created League of Hiking Societies, the starting point of the subsequent FEEC, as detailed by Francesc Roma, historian and curator of the exhibition, in the book F beautification of Hiking Entities of Catalonia. 1920-2020. One hundred years walking and saving the country (Cossetània Edicions). It could well be said that the top of La Mola lit up the FEEC.
‘Aplec’ hiker from Pla de la Garga, in 1923
A key figure in this initial stage was the first president, Caesar August Torras, who besides being one of the organizers of the gatherings He also promoted the construction of the imposing refuge of Ull de Ter.
The activity of the Lliga was interrupted in 1923, coinciding with the coup d’etat of Primo de Rivera, until in 1930 it resurfaces with the birth of the FEEC. It was a time when culture and mountains were a whole, light years away from some deplorable scenes that are seen today.
La FEEC
The third Catalan federation in number of licenses
This federation, the third in Catalonia in the number of licenses (42,569), only behind those of football and basketball, has suffered many vicissitudes throughout its 100 years. In 1939, Madrid appointed president of the new Federation of Mountaineering and Skiing of the Eastern Pyrenees, which included Catalonia, a Ignasi de Quadras, volunteer of the Tercio de Requetés de Nuestra Señora de Montserrat during the civil war. After Franco’s death, the name of FEEC was recovered.
A large panel with the silhouette of Montserrat recalls the main milestones of Catalan mountaineering. From the aforementioned Annapurna Este de Pons, Anglada and Civis al Everest by Toni Sors, Òscar Cadiach and Carles Vallès, on August 28, 1985. Or the first eight thousand achieved by an expedition of women, that of Magda Nos and Mònica Verge, on 19 September 1989. Both had to endure macho comments in the style of not going beyond base camp. The mountain world has evolved although there is still a stretch to go
In the foreground, snowshoes from the beginning of the last century
