Léo Lagrange

Who was Léo Lagrange?

Léo Lagrange was a French Under-Secretary of State for Sports and for the Organisation of Leisure during the Popular Front. A member of the Éclaireurs de France scouting association during his youth, he joined the French Section of the Workers' International after the split at the Tours party congress in 1920 and wrote articles in Populaire, the press organ of the SFIO. Elected official appointed in 1932 at the time of the second Coalition of the left, he was then named under-secretary of State in the Popular Front government of Léon Blum. He participated in the organisation of the People's Olympiad in Barcelona, organized to counter the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin which were used as a propaganda instrument of Nazism.