On the night of July 17, 1936, Conxita Badia was rehearsing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at the Palau de la Música Catalana under the direction of Pau Casals. The work was to inaugurate the People's Olympiad in Barcelona, conceived as a response to the Olympic Games that Nazi Germany was holding that summer in Berlin. During the rehearsal, news of the military uprising arrived. The concert would not take place. Before parting ways, Casals proposed that the musicians perform the final movement one more time, the song of fraternity built by Beethoven upon Schiller's Ode to Joy. They did not know when they would meet again.