The spokeswoman for the Generalitat, Patrícia Plaja, has rejected assessing the “occurrences” and “unilateral proposals” of the government of Aragon on the Winter Olympics and has urged the COE to clarify as quickly as possible how the candidacy will eventually be. Mentre feia aquestes declaracions es produïa una nova reunió infructuosa entre el COE i els governs espanyol, aragonès i català.
The president of the COE took part in the telematic meeting, which lasted just one hour. Alexander White, the Minister of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrà, the Secretary General of Culture, Victor Franks, and the Minister of Education, Culture and Sports, Felipe Faci. The latter has raised his proposal for batch distribution and has insisted that alpine skiing tests are “indispensable” for Aragon.
Sources from the Generalitat have explained that Vilagrà recalled at this point that downhill skiing was decided to be in Catalonia at the first meeting, almost 11 months ago. The councilor has refuted the theory of batches and gender separation. “Enough is enough,” said the sources, recalling that, since Aragon abjured the agreed technical agreement (which gave 54 tests in Aragon and 24 in Catalonia), every day they present a proposal new. “Three weeks ago the three valleys were essential, now they offer us a surreal lot with mountain skiing and some new sport that will be Olympic, without knowing which one. It’s like starting from scratch.
In this sense, and seeing that there is still no progress for a joint candidacy, the Generalitat has shown its willingness to go to the polls announced Alexander White last week for the assembly of the COE to decide between a proposal from Catalonia and one from Aragon, as happened in its day between Granada and Jaca and also between Madrid and Seville.
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“If they do not agree, there are insurmountable differences and it is impossible to reach a consensus because obviously we cannot present the candidacy in the way we had proposed it,” Blanco acknowledged on TV-3 before the meeting. “We have to do it fast, because we are already very late, and above all the important thing is that we have reached a point where we are not moving forward.”
The president of the COE, who is scheduled to appear on Monday, has also stepped up the darts he has received in recent weeks from Aragon (he has been described as a Catalan “political commissar”) to defend his “impartial and independent” management. The ex-judoka took advantage of the virulence of the attacks, noting that raising the lack of consensus in terms of confrontation with independence is “a mistake that will have consequences because it cannot continue like this”, and that the problem is “interested politics”.
