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Why the origins of adapted basketball in Spain are in L’Hospitalet

  • CEM L’Hospitalet, a local adapted basketball club, is the national dean that has been active since its creation in 1977

  • The protagonists at its birth and the heads of the federations of Catalonia and Spain dissect for EL PERIÓDICO the keys to its history

In Hospitalet de Llobregat there is life beyond the ‘Hospi‘, the sports complex par excellence of the great Catalan city. And there is in the Wheelchair Basketballa Paralympic sport in which the Spanish women’s team won a historical european medal at the end of 2021.

The BCR CEM L’Hospitaletthe municipality’s wheelchair basketball club, is the national team oldest which continues to be active uninterruptedly since its creation in 1977, as confirmed by Catalan Sports Federation for People with Physical Disabilities.

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The club, moreover, was born as an opportunity for women, most affected by polioto which the last strongholds of the Francoism they did not allow wheelchair basketball to compete. The current players of the club speak with THE NEWSPAPER here of their life stories after the sport. And the protagonists of their origins tell their beginnings through the following keys.

The dean active club in Spain

The CEM L’Hospitaletthe wheelchair basketball club of Hospitalet de Llobregat, is the set of this paralympic sport oldest that continues to be active uninterruptedly since its creation. its promoter, Ramón Gisbert (64 years old), Note that the team was founded in 1977first as CEM Barcelona and later as CEM L’Hospitaletalthough during the two previous years they already trained and played matches. Josep Giménezwho was also at the beginning of the club and is currently president of the Catalan Sports Federation for People with Physical Disabilitiesspecifies: “The Costa Daurada Sports Club was founded a year before, but they interrupted their activity for a period and CEM did not, so it is a fact that CEM L’Hospitalet is the club dean with more solid and uninterrupted activity since its foundation”.

An outlet for women with polio

“The CEM L’Hospitalet was born as women’s team that the Franco regime did not allow competition”. This is how Ramon Gisbert, who relates that it all started in a day of coexistence of the old ANNIC (National Association of Civil Invalids), entity active during the Francoism which Gisbert was a part of. “Some girls asked us how they could play wheelchair basketball; I asked and the ANNIC, as they were Franco supporters, told me they didn’t want to know anything about women.” At first, ANNIC enabled them to train and the women, many of them affected by poliomyelitisthey had to borrow the chairs of the men’s team. “May 1, 1976 the first women’s wheelchair basketball game in Spain was played at C/Garcilaso in Barcelona”, says Gisbert. Once ANNIC disappeared, the club came under the umbrella of the Institut Guttmanwho “was only interested in the men’s team, neglecting women“, corroborates Josep Giménezwho recalls an anecdote: “When the CEM started, they came to us! challenge parties because we had women!” One of those pioneering women was Montse Gracecurrent president of SOME Barça with which this newspaper has not been able to contact at the end of this piece.

The seed of the Olympics 92

Before Tokyo 2021, the first time that the Spanish women’s wheelchair basketball team had a presence in some Paralympic Games it was in Barcelona ’92, as hostesses. As explained Josep Giménez, president of the Catalan Sports Federation for People with Physical Disabilitiesthe seed of that team was precisely the CEM L’Hospitalet. “Together with other teams, the CEM contributed various players to that group”, highlights Giménez, who emphasizes the influence that the L’Hospitalet club has had in the dissemination and pedagogy of this sport, especially in its female approach.

In 2015, he points Ramon Gisbert, the CEM L’Hospitalet was “on the verge of disappearance”. Between him and his son, Roger Gisbert, current player and next vice-president of the group, got down to work to resurrect the team. “The club was in ruin,” says Roger Gisbert, who explains that, given the emergency situation, he had to look for players among his acquaintances for the new stage of the club. “The economic situation is always complicated: we do not have much visibility and it is difficult to find sponsors bet on us”.

Pedagogy in the schools of L’Hospitalet

One of the projects that the club is currently working on is to promote and make wheelchair basketball pedagogy in the schools of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat. “In addition to being a source of funding for us, we want students to see us as athletes, not just as people with disabilities,” he says. Juan Carlos Guerrero, current president of CEM L’Hospitalet. When the players participate in these types of activities, Guerrero continues, the parents write them comments by mail about how they have changed their view of disabilities. “When the kids sit in the chair, they see that it costs a lot and that we are not ‘poor things’, but that this is a sport”.

Read all the news about L’Hospitalet de Llobregat in THE NEWSPAPER L’Hospitalet

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