Ninety years since Spain's first European basketball medals

EuroBasket 1935 was the first basketball championship held by the newly created international basketball organisation (FIBA). It was a kind of test event preceding the first Olympic basketball tournament at the 1936 Summer Olympics. Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Italy, France, Switzerland, Latvia and Spain arrived in Geneva. (Great Britain was not represented, as Basketball England was only founded in 1936, and the British team made its debut as hosts at the 1948 Olympic Games).

Spain joined FIBA in 1934, however the history of basketball in Spain according to some reports dates back to 1912. There is a version that Eladi Homs, a teacher who became acquainted with the game while working in Chicago, introduced the sport to the Vallparadís school in the Catalan city of Terrassa.

However the father of Spanish basketball is recognised as Father Eusebio Millán. Born in Soria province, and living in Barcelona from an early age, Millán travelled to Cuba as a missionary in 1911. On the island, which was under strong American influence at the time, he learned about the new sport from soldiers.

Eusebio Millán returned to Spain in 1921 and introduced basketball to the Pious Schools of San Antón in Barcelona. At first, the students showed no interest in the sport and wanted to continue playing football. So Millán hid all the footballs so that his students would play basketball, but that didn't help either. He then offered a compromise: three days a week of each sport. It worked, and in 1922, Eusebio Millán founded the first club in the Catalan capital: Laietà Basket Club. As for Andalucía... in the early 1930s, baloncesto (basketball in Spanish) first appeared in Seville and Granada.

Spain, playing under the tricolour flag, the official flag of the Second Spanish Republic, had to play a qualifying match to get into EuroBasket 1935. As the organisers of the European Championship wanted an even number of teams, so a play-off match was held between Portugal and Spain.

On 15 April 1935, the Spanish team played its first ever match on a specially prepared court at the Chamartín Stadium in Madrid. It is interesting, that Spanish coach Mariano Manent was also the referee. Winning 33-12, Spain qualified for the European Championship in Geneva but... the Basketball Federation said it could not cover the travel expenses. Apparently, the president of the federation, Gonzalo Aguirre, was forced to pay the expenses out of his own pocket. It is reported that due to this situation, the team was an hour late for their first-round match against Belgium. Having escaped disqualification, the match was still played and ended in a victory for Spain.

Incidentally, the Spanish team consisted mainly of players who were not born on the Iberian Peninsula. For example, the best player of EuroBasket 1935, Rafael Martin, was born in Panama and, curiously, was only 1.60 cm tall, which earned him the nickname ‘Le petite espagnol’ (The Little Spaniard). Brothers Emilio and Pedro Alonso Arbeleche were born in Cuba, while Rafael Ruano was born in Costa Rica. Coach Mariano Manent came to Spain from the Argentine city of Córdoba.

The small Baltic country of Latvia, which gained independence from the Russian Empire in 1918, became an obstacle for the Spaniards on their way to gold medals. It should be noted that basketball gained popularity both in Latvia and in neighbouring Lithuania, which, by the way, became the second champion of EuroBasket 1937. In 2012, a Latvian biographical sports drama film, Dream Team 1935 (such name was given to the Latvian national team for that incredible success), was released, based on the events of the tournament and the final against Spain.