Xabier Añua is living history of our sport, the coach who put the elite basketball back on the map by Barça after the black decade that the Barça team went through in the sixties. Under his direction, and taking advantage of the momentum that the opening of the Palau Blaugrana in 1971, the foundations were laid for what would be the relaunch of the section and its subsequent successes. Today, at 86 years of age, this man from Vitoria who is still in love with Catalonia (he maintains a house in Cubelles) will return to the Palau to remember old times and reunite with his Barça family. In memory, that first and legendary Barça basketball game at the Palau Blaugrana, eight days after its inauguration (October 31) and above all a Real Madrid, then unapproachable.
What do you remember about that first game at the Palau against Real Madrid?
It was at the top, with people on top of each other in the stands. We had played the previous years at the Palacio de los Deportes on Lleida street, which was large but dark and somewhat outdated. Suddenly they built us the Palau, very bright and with a series of services that we did not have before, the wood was very beautiful, everything was very modern … The pavilion on Lleida street was quite full but here it was the milk. During all that first season the full ones were total, total. The Palau had a very good sound, it made everything very close.
Añua, in the center, together with Scariolo, Gavaldà (president of the coaches association), Portela (former president of the ACB) and Aíto García Renese, in a tribute that was paid to him in the 2017 Copa del Rey de Vitoria
And to release it, nothing less than the eternal rival …
Madrid at that time was an impressive team. Everyone said that it was the Franco regime team and that allowed them to have a tremendous squad with Luyk, Vicente Ramos, Cabrera, Cristóbal, Emiliano, who still played in that team … Ours was a much younger team . When I arrived at Barça they gave me the youth team, which was champion of Spain, and from there several of the Barça players came out at that Palau premiere. When they gave me the first team they told me ‘keep a couple of the old ones and sign two new ones’, which was when I brought Aíto, who was very young, and Aspiazu, with Martos and Sanjuán, who just passed away. It was a very young team, very young.
“When Barça signed me, they wanted us to become a real Madrid rival in four or five years. You couldn’t start at the Palau with a team that wasn’t competitive.”
He signed you at Barça in 1968 …
When Barça signed me I was coming from New York, where I had been learning with the Knicks. They asked me if I had been trained in management there because what they wanted was for us to become a real rival of Madrid in four or five years. Barça was then one of those below the table. And they had calculated four or five years thinking about the opening of the Palau. You couldn’t start at the Palau with a team that wasn’t competitive. In those days there were the Joventut, the Picadero …
Xabier Añua ,, on the terrace of his apartment in Cubelles
And the premiere of the Palau arrives and its young people have to do with an ogre like Madrid …
Winning that game we went 5-0, Madrid felt like a shot. We were 60-57, I will never forget it. The game was terrifying. Martín Tello, a journalist who was very Madridista, wrote that Madrid expected a trap and that in the end the public applauded the whites and the game was white-collar. White glove was not so much, we gave each other firewood to the fullest. It was very nice because they believed until the end that they could win, because they always ended up winning. And the last two minutes were when we beat them, we took the first difference from them. And then the pavilion did explode. Because they all jumped onto the track, they took us out on their shoulders. He does not know how exciting it was, to win against Madrid, which was unbeatable, the ovation of your court, with all the public that is delivered to you, that they take you on their shoulders. In the end we finished second (Madrid would not lose another game in the entire league), which was enough. And from there the Palau never stopped encouraging us, if we lost they would get up to applaud at the end anyway. With the Palau we finally had a house, our house. I don’t want to say that we were bad on Lleida street, but being at home is something else.
Winning that game we went 5-0, Madrid felt like a shot. We were 60-57, I will never forget it “
You integrated very well in Barcelona …
When I arrived I saw that all the kids were speaking Catalan. Well, I learned how I could and then all the orders were given in Catalan. And seeing that the fans encouraged me even more. You have to integrate where you go. Since then I have an unbeatable memory of Barcelona and Catalonia and I keep a house in Cubelles. You have to feel like you work for that. Aíto has always done very well where he has gone, he has always worked for the club where he was, not for him.
Xabier Añua, with the photo in which they lift him on his shoulders after beating Real Madrid in the first Barça basketball game at the Palau on October 31, 1971
Since then he has always shared his love for Baskonia with which he maintains for Barça, anyone who follows him on social networks knows it …
I identified myself with an entire country. And when you fall in love with something, love must take care of it. Barça was kind enough to pay me a tribute two years ago because it was the 50th anniversary of my signing for the club. He could hardly even speak because he was doing nothing but crying with emotion. There were all the players who played with me. That fifty years later your players from then love you, it means that you are with them and they are with you. Carmichael, for example, spent nine years at Barça, which gave him a Spanish passport. Well, he still uses it to come to Barcelona. And it comes to that, to be …