Table football game. Museum of the History of Catalonia. Photo by Pep Parer.
Alexandre de Fisterra invented this particular type of table football. He was injured in a bombing raid in Madrid during the Civil War. When he saw so many children injured like himself, who could no longer play football, he came up with the idea of this game. He asked Francisco Javier Altuna, a Basque refugee and carpenter, to make the first table football following his instructions. Fisterra patented his creation in 1937 in Barcelona, and his model came to be known as the "futbolí català".
