At the press conference with councilor Laura Vilagrà, the director of the Olympic Office, Mònica Bosch, defended this candidacy: “We have been organizing winter sports competitions since 2008. We are ready. We can present a candidacy that is sustainable, that represents a change in the Olympic paradigm”. The press event was held after the meeting of the territorial table of the Games, with the presence of the mayors of the municipalities that would host them, the regional councils and the presidents of the winter sports federations of Catalonia and Spain . It should be remembered that Barcelona and the Pyrenees started working with a Catalan-only candidacy in 2010, to which Aragon was added due to COE demands at the time. Previously, work had already been done on a proposal to distribute seats only in Catalonia, which has now been slightly modified.
In this meeting, the details of a candidacy were agreed which should be able to host 114 Olympic and 30 Paralympic events. The new project, worked on the basis of the first Olympic proposal almost ten years ago, proposes to distribute the snow tests in five stations in the Pyrenees: Espot (snowboardparallel giant slalom), Beret, Baqueira (snowboard i freestyle, snowboardcross, ski cross, snowboard i freestyle aerials, bamps, halfpipe, slope style, biathlon and cross-country skiing), Molina-Masella (alpine skiing, downhill, supergiant, giant slalom, slalom) and Boí Taüll (mountain skiing, sprints and relays). The biathlon and cross-country skiing events, which went to Aragonese stations when this government was still working, would now go to Baqueira Beret. In addition, it is still advocated to take the tests that require large non-existent facilities in the Pyrenees abroad, with the trampoline jumps and the sliding circuit in Sarajevo or the Alps.
A new center in Gavà
For ice sports, it is committed to the metropolitan area, with facilities in Barcelona, Badalona and the great news, a new high-performance ice sports center in Gavà. At the Palau Sant Jordi, figure skating and short track speed skating would take place; ice hockey would be at the new Palau del Barça and at the Olímpic de Badalona; long-track skating, at the Fira de Barcelona, and curling, at the new ice sports CAR in Gavà.
The International Olympic Committee has not yet chosen the venue for the 2030 Games. Vancouver, Salt Lake City and Sapporo have shown interest. In order to present a candidacy, however, it is necessary for the COE to do so, which defended a unity candidacy with Aragon that was impossible due to the position of Javier Lambán’s government. Now, the Generalitat continues to work to convince both the COE and the IOC. “The IOC had already validated a candidacy in our territory at the time. At the moment we are not part of the 2030 candidacy list but we can be there,” Vilagrà recalled. In fact, as “the rest of the process is not in our hands”, according to Vilagrà, the referendum announced at the time in the Pyrenees remains “paralysed” since “we will not vote until the Olympic Committee officially validates our candidacy” .
