THE LITTLE PAWN

At the age of just twelve, Arturito Pomar appeared on the magazine covers of the 1940s as a child chess prodigy. He became a popular figure in Spain during this period of hardship and, thanks to him, the game with sixty-four squares became so fashionable that thousands of Spaniards began to play it. The Franco regime, keen to display the friendly side of the dictatorship, didn’t hesitate to capitalise on the cultural and intellectual prestige that Pomar’s international fame brought it. They exploited him by making him play simultaneous games and competitions, making use of his childhood image for their own interests. In the collective memory there remains the idea that, when he ceased to be a child, he gave up playing and fell into oblivion, but the fact is that Pomar continued to improve his game long after he was regarded as a child prodigy. As a young man who was no longer supported by the Government, he travelled for three years all over America, winning tournaments and money as fast as he squandered it. Money meant nothing to him, as he’d become an eccentric who only understood chess. When he returned to Spain, he married and had seven children. He became a post office civil servant to support his family, but he never abandoned his great and only passion: chess. Despite his large family and his work, he continued to play all over the world. His key moment arrived during the 1962 Stockholm Interzonal, the tournament leading up to the world championship. There he faced the best players in the world completely alone, including the Russians and Bobby Fischer of the USA. He’d reached the pinnacle of his career, but the superhuman effort of preparing for games on little sleep broke him and triggered schizophrenia.