Sitges 1934

◇Catalonia stages an international

The tournament was played under the sponsorship of the Generalitat de Catalunya with the support of the Catalan and Spanish chess federations, its organizing committee headed by Ricardo Guinart Cavallé and the veteran Valentín Marín directing play. The rounds ran each afternoon at the Hotel Terramar Palace, with several accelerated morning sessions held in the gardens of the nearby Hotel Golf Terramar, at a time control of eighteen moves per hour.

For Spain, where chess was still a minority pursuit, the event was an ambitious statement: four foreign masters of the first rank — Savielly Tartakower, Rudolf Spielmann, George Koltanowski and the young Dutchman Lodewijk Prins — joined Lilienthal and Aristide Gromer of France against the strongest available Spaniards, led by national champion Ramón Rey Ardid and Manuel Golmayo. Sitges 1934 set the template for the string of international tournaments that followed in Catalonia: Barcelona 1935, Roses 1935 and Reus 1936.

◇Only Lilienthal beats Rey Ardid

Lilienthal won eight games and drew five, taking first with 10½. Rey Ardid's second place on 10 was hailed as a magnificent result for Spanish chess: he lost only to Lilienthal himself. Tartakower and Koltanowski followed on 9½, and Spielmann — with Lilienthal the only other undefeated player — took fifth on 9. Further down, the draws that Catalans Rafael Llorens and Àngel Ribera extracted from the tournament winner counted among the home successes of the event.

◇The year of Lilienthal

Sitges opened the finest stretch of the young Hungarian's career. Within months he produced his most celebrated victory, the queen sacrifice against former world champion José Raúl Capablanca at Hastings 1934/35, and in 1935 he emigrated to the Soviet Union, where he became one of the world's leading players and, in 1950, one of FIDE's original grandmasters.