La Penya is not just a basketball club, it is a way of living
Zeljko Obradovic
------------------------------------
–And they carried me out on their shoulders –Joaquín Broto (99) tells me.
This almost centenarian man goes back to the fifties to tell me stories in black and white. Few images remain from those times, few photos, few videos. There is no TikTok or Instagram or cell phones collecting shots, on the fields there are no three-point lines or four-quarter games either. The figures show austere results: results at fifty or sixty points. Sometimes, rarely, at seventy.
Reach a hundred?
That's not common.
¿The NBA?
Has anyone heard of Bill Russell? They say that in universities a unique guy grows up who walks the slopes with a ribbon in his hair. His name is Wilt Chamberlain.
In Spain, the dictatorship rides comfortably over the country. Madrid is the master of sport, it is in football and also in basketball.
Joaquín Broto received me at his house in Terrassa, a stone's throw from the Masia Freixa. Before interviewing the man, I occupied a bench in the Sant Jordi park. I spent some time contemplating the farmhouse.
It is aquatic, pure Art Nouveau.
Joaquín Broto manages himself with effort, 99 years old contemplate him. He takes a seat in the big chair, holds the basketball in one hand, smiles at Cristóbal Castro, the photographer, who is popular in the house as he is popular in the town.
Joaquín Broto tells me:
–We won the 1955 Spanish Championship in Barcelona, we beat Madrid (59-44), and my players carried me on their shoulders. I still have the photo in La Vanguardia!
He points to the fan of publications resting at his feet. His name appears in some of them.
His number appears in Historias del Joventut, by Santi Escribano. And La Penya in 75 words, by Toni Soler. And in History of basketball in Spain, by Carlos Jiménez Poyato.
We are joined in the talk by María Gloria, his wife, and Chan, one of the couple's five children. None of the children were basketball players. Chan did like the rest of the brothers. He dedicated himself to field hockey, a national sport in Terrassa. Seven of the eleven grandchildren followed in the footsteps of their fathers and mothers: they played in the Honor Division. Some won Leagues and Copas del Rey. Glòria Comerma Broto, a granddaughter, participated in the Beijing 2008 and Rio 2016 Games. Joaquín Broto has been a rare sight in his own family, the only basketball lover in a lineage of stickers.
(...)
Joaquín Broto has been rare for many reasons, starting with his origins in Barbastro, the son of shopkeepers exiled to Bordeaux during the Franco regime, a child raised by his uncle Antonio in Zaragoza and, later, by his cousin Victoria in Burgos and, finally, navigator in multiple pensions in Barcelona, where he had arrived with a fountain pen and five duros (25 pesetas: 0.15 euros).
He also had a doctor uncle, and with him he entered into an internship at the Clinic.
Joaquín Broto works during the day, studies Medicine at night.
–And while I studied and worked, I played basketball. Four cats played it, we played it because we liked it.
He tells me about Roberto and other friends. Spurred on by his passion, he competes for national basketball coach. He graduates as number 1 in his promotion.
In 1953 Penya signed him.
He is 32 years old.
–Joventut never paid me a salary. It wasn't paid then! –She tells me.
Well, Barça did pay. He was able to verify it himself, in 1955, when the Blaugrana went to sign him.
–They gave me 50,000 pesetas (300 euros). I got home and threw the bills in the air. They flew away. What happened is that the Barça project did not work. They offered me some signings that were not made.
He soon returned to his home, La Penya, and with it he won another title, the 1958 Copa del Generalísimo: he once again defeated the whites (74-69, in Zaragoza).
–We lost 62-51 with two minutes left. I called a timeout and told my men: “Only a miracle can make us win. “If we achieve it, we will go and put a candle in the Church of La Pilarica.”
(They won, although the family lived off the father's medicine).
