The Spanish region of Catalonia announced on Monday that it would organize a local referendum on the candidacy of the Spanish Pyrenees to organize the Winter Olympics in 2030, which is encountering multiple resistance. This consultation, scheduled for July 24, will have two parts and will bepolitically binding“, said the Minister of the Presidency of the Generalitat (Catalan regional government), Laura Vilagrà.
The inhabitants of the Pyrenean municipalities likely to host the greatest number of Olympic events will first of all be called upon to say whether the Catalan government should maintain its candidacy or not. According to Ms. Vilagrà, 55,000 people could be brought to speak on this issue. “We listen directly to citizenslikely to be affected by the event, she insisted at a press conference.
Residents of other neighboring towns will be asked whether they wish to participate in the organization of this event, which is opposed by environmentalists and local associations. According to the Stop JO platform, supported by several personalities such as the Spanish mountain superstar Kilian Jornet, it would be “seriously irresponsibleto organize this event in an area that is less and less snowy due to the rise in temperatures due to climate change.
Unequal distribution?
Beyond these oppositions, the Spanish candidacy comes up against disagreements between Catalonia and Aragon, a neighboring region with which the draft candidacy, for the Olympics which would be the first winter Olympics in Spain, was initially designed. Annoyed by a distribution of events that it considers unbalanced, the region of Aragon refused on Friday to validate the technical project of candidacy, endorsed by the central government, the Catalan regional government and the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE).
According to this project, Catalonia would host alpine skiing, snowboarding, artistic skiing and ice hockey, planned in Barcelona. Aragon would host biathlon, cross-country skiing, figure and speed skating events and curling. Other sites, yet to be determined, would be mobilized for this application, in order to host the ski jumping, Nordic combined, bobsleigh, skeleton and luge events.
Only one city has at this stage officially applied for the 2030 Winter Olympics: the Japanese Sapporo, host of the 1972 Winter Olympics. But other cities have expressed their interest, like the American Salt Lake City or Canadian Vancouver.
