The city had prepared to host the People's Olympics during the summer of 1936, building the Olympic Stadium and developing the Montjuïc area, but the insurrection of the army in July 1936 plunged Spain into civil war. Some of the athletes who had arrived for the Games reputedly stayed to form the first of the Republican International Brigades, made famous by the writers Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell (Homage to Catalonia), and others.