the big bang happened everywhere
There's really no way to know if there was something in existence before the big bang however. We just lack evidence of such a thing.
It is true that in GR you can't speak of "before" the big bang, but the big bang itself is a feature within time. It happens at the first moments of time and everywhere in space. And if you replace the initial singularity with a dense quantum foam and thus are able to extend time into the past in some quantum sense, the big bang doesn't go away.