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 already encountering multiple resistance.
This consultation, scheduled for July 24, will have two parts and will be “politically binding”, said the Minister of the Presidency of the Generalitat, the 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 Mme Vilagrà, 55,000 people could be brought to speak on this issue. “We are listening directly to citizens” likely to be affected by the event, she insisted during 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, including Spanish mountain star Kilian Jornet, it would be “seriously irresponsible” to organize this event in an area that is less and less snowy due to climate change.
Beyond these oppositions, the Spanish candidacy comes up against disagreements between Catalonia and Aragon, the neighboring region with which the draft candidacy was initially designed.
Annoyed by a distribution of events that she considers unbalanced, the latter refused to validate Friday 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. Aragon would host biathlon, cross-country skiing, figure and speed skating events, as well as curling.
Other sites, which remain to be determined, would be mobilized for this candidacy 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: Japan’s Sapporo, host of the 1972 Winter Olympics. But other cities have shown interest, including Salt Lake City , USA, and Vancouver, Canada.