Early Life
Samaranch was born into a wealthy family in Barcelona. He studied at the local Swiss School and at the German School of Barcelona. As a child, he was a keen roller hockey player. During the Spanish Civil War, he was conscripted into the Republican forces in 1938, at the age of 18, to serve as a medical orderly. However, he was politically opposed to the Republic, and escaped to France. He quickly returned to Nationalist Spain under Francisco Franco and enrolled in the Spanish fascist movement Falange.
Read more about this topic: Juan Antonio Samaranch
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Some would find fault with the morning red, if they ever got up early enough.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is nothing so noble and so right as to play our human life well and fitly, nor anything so difficult to learn as how to live this life well and according to Nature.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)