Catalonia will hold a referendum to measure support for a joint Olympic Games with Spain

Catalonia will decide whether or not to support Spain’s candidacy to host the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in 2030. For this, the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonés, has drawn up a plan to hold a referendum among the citizens of the Catalan Pyrenees during 2022 to get their opinion on the candidacy.

The Catalan Government, on the other hand, This leaves the city of Barcelona out of your consultation –Which will be the name used as a hook for the Games–, despite the requests of Mayor Ada Colau. The candidacy was promoted this summer by the Generalitat under the Pirineus-Barcelona brand, with the aim of combining the attractiveness of the capital and the sports centers high mountain in the north of the province of Lleida.

This project is also linked to the Aragonese Pyrenees, which is the other fundamental for the project to go ahead. The executive of Pedro Sánchez and the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE) They do not contemplate that this event is not held without the support of stations such as Cerler, Formigal or Panticosa.

The Catalans would have to share the limelight with Aragon and re-organize an international event under the auspices of Spain as already happened in the Mediterranean Games in 2017. Aragonés has publicly defended the need for this candidacy to go ahead to improve the economy of Catalonia by being “an opportunity in a sustainable ecological, social and economic framework”.

Despite everything, Aragonés has not made his intentions entirely clear with the possibility of using this competition as a political weapon. “It should be possible to hold the Winter Games with these criteria, adapting to the global challenges that we face”said the highest Catalan president in an ambiguous statement. Now the citizens of the Catalan Pyrenees have the floor, although it seems obvious that the ‘yes’ should win.