BarcelonaThe paths of Barça and Olot cross again in the first pre-season friendly of Xavi Hernández’s team. For decades, the two clubs have lived in different realities, with Barça around Europe with their heads held high and the Garrotxins suffering in regional camps, a journey that ended about 10 years ago, when Olot became an example. of good management with the presidency of Joan Agustí, with whom he reached the Second Division B. They are two seemingly distant clubs but united by a common history, as many of the founders of Barça participated in the birth of Olot in July 1912.
In the 10s, Olot was known by many as the “Catalan Switzerland”. The term was first used as the title of Monsignor Gelabert’s guide The little Catalan Switzerland. Illustrated guide to Olot and Ses Valls, from 1908, because it was an area with mountain landscapes and a higher standard of living, full of second homes for Barcelonans with money, who found an ideal place to escape the summer heat of Barcelona. The town of Olot grew with a new neighborhood full of elegant villas and modernist mansions, until the city became a meeting point between the most active local people and enterprising Barcelonans. Olot was famous for its art schools, at a time when artists were looking for nature to be inspired. Artists who would inspire local young people, who made their way in both the art world and sports, at a time when the two concepts could go together seamlessly. A people who together founded Olot in 1912, with the presence of different people who spent their summers in the city who had played a key role in the first years of Barça’s life. One of them was Joan Gamper himself, who used to spend the summers in Olot and who would give his advice to start the organization. One of the founders of the Garrotxa club would be Peris de Vargas, then vice-president of Barça and future president of the club, who had arrived in Olot to accompany his brother, a civil guard stationed here. Gamper would be invited by Peris de Vargas to the first matches and some meetings where the foundations of the club were laid, initially known as Olot Deportivo and later, after a refoundation, as Unió Esportiva Olot. That first Olot, by the way, was dressed in the colors of Barça, of course.
Football gradually ceased to be a sport for foreigners to win the hearts of young Catalans, spreading like wildfire throughout Catalonia, seducing young people eager to build a new, modern country. In fact, the creation of Olot coincided with the project to build a lot of new sports facilities in the city, in addition to the football field. In 1912 Gamper himself took part in the tennis tournament organized by Olot, partnering with Ugo Steinberg, the author of Barça’s first goal against Real Madrid a decade earlier, in 1902. To celebrate the birth of Olot, the Barça did not send their team there: they sent two. Gamper would preside over that friendly, one of which with Barça playing against Olot at the Camp dels Desemparats, which premiered watching a young Paulino Alcántara in action.
The road between Olot and Barcelona, however, was in two directions. As Josep Bobé recalled in this article in ARA, many of the most famous artists in Olot studied and trained in Barcelona, where they would be members of FC Barcelona, as it appears in the census of the same years in which it was founded. Olot. Names as important as the sculptor Josep Clarà i Ayats or the painter Francesc Vayreda. The Tarragona painter Ignasi Mallol and the sculptor Esteve Monegal would leave Barcelona to live in Olot for long seasons. Key names in Catalan culture at the beginning of the century who witnessed football matches between the two clubs. A list that cannot be forgotten Josep Llimona, who would also be a member of Barça and who was the author of the bust of Gamper that premiered on the occasion of the tribute to the founder of Barça in 1923. Both Josep and the his son Rafael was a member of Barça and spent the summer in Olot.
Barça would be tired of playing friendlies in Olot before the Civil War, as in 1929 after the Barça club asked to sign Manel Trayter from Olot, who would play for Barça for a few years. Within the negotiations a friendly party was agreed. Trayter, by the way, from the same family as the president of Barça’s board of directors in 2003, Joan Trayter, and the partner’s later trustee, Joan Manuel Trayter. A lineage with roots in La Garrotxa that has also left its signature on Barça in a new common link between Olot and FC Barcelona. In the 70’s, Barça would spend many pre-seasons at the Hotel Montsacopa, playing some friendlies with Olot. The last friendly between the two clubs was in 1980. In recent years, the Barça subsidiary has played against Garrotxa, but it will not be until now that the first two teams will resume an old tradition.
