On 18 and 19 April the “24 Hours of Catalan Chess” was held, and from 21 April to 3 May the XXI International Costa del Sol Tournament. In both competitions our collaborator and friend IM Ricardo Calvo took part, and he was responsible for covering them for us. Lack of space prevents us from adding more games, Fogonazos, and other considerations on the organisation and future of this tournament, which we leave for our next issue.

We wish to highlight the addition to the select group of technical collaborators of Jaque of the brilliant former world champion Miguel Tahl, who today begins his work in our pages precisely by annotating the game he played in this Costa del Sol Tournament, together with the author of the report that follows.

Cheap Philosophical Preamble

I am convinced that whoever reads this, by the very fact of being a chess player, has, like Goethe’s Faust, two souls beating in his breast. One is the soul that forces him to go to work every day, fulfil his family obligations, fill out forms for income-tax returns or for the municipal census, read in the newspaper the “outrages” committed by politicians, and save up to buy a television set.

The other soul, the chess-playing one, is the one that reclines and whimpers under the pressure of this social machinery and ends up asking itself, like Faust, whether it has not made a pact with the devil that has cost it its soul. There is the world of the chessboard, with its magical little black-and-white squares, calling us constantly, and to which we can respond only with fragments and tattered scraps of what was once our spirit as youthful chess players.

Three weeks is not much, but it is something. In telepathic and kaleidoscopic fashion, I am going to give a few personal impressions.

The 24 Hours of Catalan Chess

The tournament, with prizes never before seen or heard of, reaching the first hundred classified players, was sponsored by the Generalitat, the City Council of Sant Cugat del Vallès, and I do not know who else, but the posters bore more names than I care to look at.

From 5 p.m. on Saturday 18 April until 7 p.m. on Sunday 19, one tried to play, with brief pauses, 24 continuous hours of chess, using the Masnou system. According to the Catalans, the people of the Maresme are given to dangerous inventions. In this particular case, it is a matter of a third of the players being permanently on a waiting list, not playing. Meanwhile, games of 15 minutes are played. Whoever loses — or, in the event of a draw, whoever had the white pieces — gets up and moves to the bottom of the waiting list until the flow of players allows him to play again. The point is therefore not to get up, and to win quickly, because in the end the player with the most points wins.

The organisation of such a multitudinous event is by no means easy. The technical direction was in the hands of Salvador Ruiz. Delfín Burdio acted as chief arbiter, with his famous left hand for solving problems. Adolfo González, wrapped in his waistcoat, I do not know whether as a bulletproof vest, was the promoter, manager and inspirer of this kind of rosary of the chess dawn.

Korchnoi, perhaps at the urging of his secretary or of some institution afflicted with the instinct for survival, at first resisted playing the “24 Hours”, and I remember that I did what little I could to convince him. His permanent presence was a success for the event, attracting the public’s attention day and night. He won first prize, after the “eighty-odd” innocent chess players who were led by the assistant arbiters into the fateful corner, like sheep to the slaughterhouse. My kaleidoscopic impressions: Mateu scoring points like a kind of chess combine harvester. Farré sending me into the limbo of the waiting list with an accepted queen’s gambit. The wicked Pomés skewering me along a diagonal. Sleep. Coffee. Conversations with Ibáñez, as in our good times at the Alcoy Club, and Nieves García, with her deceptive fragility, holding out where so many brave men were surrendering. Her son Guillermo appearing in the playing hall with one white sock and one dark one, as if he too wished to play chess with his feet, just as we adults did. More sleep and more coffee, invited by a very kind arbiter whose name I can no longer remember. A radiant Nepomuceno newly emerged from his Ruy López archives. Chess players in wheelchairs or with crutches, without giving up from fatigue. Sandwiches. Loudspeakers. The public in general.

During those 24 hours, more than 400 chess souls partially freed themselves from the pressure of the social machinery. I sincerely believe it was a great success, however much the social machinery may go on looking at us as madmen. This time with greater reason.

In the end, that same machinery, which wanted to buy the 400 chess souls for a million pesetas — a truly ridiculous price for a pact of such magnitude — failed in some cog of its mechanism. The range of opinions this arouses is very varied: from demanding the petitioner’s ear to asking for his head. I prefer not to comment and to offer my sufferings over the conversion of the little Chinese, as they used to say at school. Nevertheless, the warrior activities of the cry “Pacta sunt servanda” or “a fight is a fight” are entirely justified. Deep down, what do you want? The matter seems to me to have grace. Morera was already telling me: “Beware the winds of the Maresme.”

After 19 years without taking part in the Málaga tournaments — which have so often given rise to talk — figures and characters such as Pereiro and Haritver, from the Andalusian chess firmament, removed, as everyone knows, tend to be clear, and with the beard grown because of the waiting period and the 24 Hours of Sant Cugat, I landed in Málaga following a generous and cordial invitation from the organisers.

The Peña El Sombrero is a private club with more than nine hundred members, very pretty tiles on the walls, a bingo hall, a bar-restaurant run, among others, by two very efficient elements called Manolo and Aranda, one president in heaven and another on earth — the latter, as is natural, a changing one — and a shield with a tilted hat above it and a motto that says: “To er mundo e güeno.” The phrase seems sustainable to me, since none of the previous organisers belonged to the Peña, which, as we see, has not only its own resources but even its own philosophy.

The director of the tournament was the Most Excellent Mr. Román Torán, count of the same name, and chief arbiter was the outstanding IM Antonio Medina, which allows some friends to give him the friendly nickname “Fabio”.

With the permission of the authorities, twelve chess players, from the most varied livestock, took part. The most feared Miura bull, who did not perform as expected, was Tahl. Some foreigners, as can be seen from the attached table, produced little play, while others turned out to be tame. The revelation was José Luis Fernández, whom at a bullfighting fiesta held on the rest day they would have nicknamed “El Cartujano”, and who showed bravery and stamina, especially in the adjourned games with Tahl.

The chronicler, a reject from a tent, black beret and borderless ambition, was received with applause, cheered in some passages, and returned to the pens of the second half of the table after several chastising cuts. Jesús Díez del Corral did well, but suffered a serious catch in an ending that he should have won, and was lost with the dirty stab — the swordsman being me, Luis XIV — and despite his effort to recover he could not avoid further mishaps. Ángel Martín shared positions with the prodigy from Triana, who by the way heard much praise. He finished the event with many pitos and disappointment from the respectable public: a great bullfighter whom I do not know whether to call Manuelito or Manuelete, but who may perhaps allow me the nickname “Niño del Elo”.

Joking aside, the atmosphere of the tournament was very cordial. There were some good games, which their protagonists annotate. The rest day gave us a very pleasant Cervantes-San Miguel party, of world fame, for which I publicly express my gratitude. It was also a pleasant surprise to discover that the Culture delegate is an attentive and educated chess player, free moreover from any desire for publicity.

I was able to make a few excursions, to see towns around Málaga, and I escaped without looking back from Álora, near where an enthusiastic chess player called Botello invited me to a game, made me a king’s gambit, and took both my pieces. Warning to travellers...

And finally, to end all my personalisms, I shall tell the reader that one gets through three weeks of chess very well. Forgive the roll and the disorder, which I hope bothers no one except the director of Jaque, who tends to be too stiff and formalistic.