The joint candidacy of Aragon and Catalonia for the 2030 Winter Olympics seems to have reached a point of no return because after 11 months of blockade a solution satisfactory to both parties has not been found, above all for political reasons.
The last meeting of all the parties involved, the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE), the Government of Aragon, the Generalitat and the central government, was held last Tuesday, without reaching any agreement. Aragon continues to insist that the equality in the distribution that had been promised has not been respected, while the COE he is annoyed by the demands of the Aragonese delegation, which once again presented a proposal different from the one agreed upon in April by all the parties, a pact from which the president of Aragon got off the hook, Javier Lamban. This has maintained a belligerent tone from the beginning and has taken the matter to the terrain of political confrontationeven came to present a counterproposal that is not even well seen from the sports field: that of distributing the tests by sex, male in one community and female in another.
Faced with the endless blockade of the negotiations, two solutions are proposed that, in reality, mean the failure of the candidacy. One is the proposal, made on Thursday, by the ‘consellera’ of the Presidency of the Generalitat, Laura Vilagra, that Catalonia presents a candidacy alone for which it claims to feel ready. In response to the proposal, Lambán reacted with great virulence stating that “Catalonia has definitively removed its mask” with an attitude that shows “an absolute degree of intolerance and disdain for Aragon” and announced that it would resort to all national and international organizations because “it It would be generating a very serious territorial and political crisis.”
Vilagrà, for his part, blamed the difficulties on “anti-Catalanism” and the proximity of the regional elections in Aragon. Added to the political scuffle is the reluctance of the Government of Pedro Sánchez (which has not ruled on the dispute) in the face of the consultation that is to be held in the affected Catalan regions.
The other proposal is the postponement of the candidacy until 2034 due to the impossibility of reaching 2030 in time, whose venue must be decided in the first half of 2023 and the IOC visit to Catalonia and Aragon to supervise the candidacy has already been postponed. . The COE is reluctant to certify the failure, but the shipwreck of the candidacy is getting closer and closer because the Spanish Olympic body has always said that either there is a joint candidacy or there is no candidacy. The central government is in the same position.
That is why the only solution is to rush the negotiations to the last minute to reach an agreement, returning as much as possible to the technical agreement which was reached in April, which granted 54 tests to Aragon and 42 to Catalonia, but which Lambán rejected when considering that the importance of sports specialties was harmed, especially since all alpine skiing was taken to the Catalan Pyrenees.
What can be assured is that a solo candidacy from Catalonia or Aragon has no chance against Salt Lake City, Sapporo or Vancouver – the other candidates – and less if it is presented in the middle of a political battle, something that the IOC rejects outright.