2023-08-24 06:01:30
The city of Barcelona will host this weekend the first two stages of the Tour of Spain, topped off on Sunday with a spectacular ascent to the Olympic mountain of Montjuïc. The commitment to attract this sporting event is not an isolated event, but rather a way of a shared strategy from the City Council, the sports entities and the tourist sector of the city, reactivated in the previous municipal mandate.
The 1992 Olympic Barcelona left a legacy of top-level sports facilities and an urban landscape suitable for capture the organization of major sporting events, with the boost that they represent to a very specific and profitable subsector of the tourism market. However, during a specific period, Ada Colau’s first term, this ceased to be a priority. The desire to critically review the Barcelona model inherited from 1992, the reluctance in the face of the expansion of tourism in the city and the mistrust of activities that could be considered as promoters of a city-showcase they put a brake on this way of promoting the economy and the external image of the city. an unnecessary resignation as was already recognized in a second term, in which factors such as the forceful impact of the pandemic or the new balance within the municipal government coalition led to reviewing certain positions. That synthesis that led to reactivate tourism promotion of the city, to revalue the role of the hotel industry in the urban space or, also, to assume the need to maintain the attractiveness that large musical or sporting events bring to the city, trying to make all of this compatible with the interests and needs of the city. This work has begun to bear fruit with the capture of the America Cup or the start of the Vuelta 2023 and aspires to have continuity with the Tour de France, the World Athletics Championships, the Final Four of the Euroleague basketball or the 2030 Soccer World Cups.
But the programming of major sporting events The only obstacle in recent years has not been the debate on the city model. During the peak moments of the ‘procés’, but also in the previous years, competing to attract an event with the name of Spanish would have been anathema. And at certain times, susceptible to generating episodes of tension that would have had nothing to do with acts of protest or visibility of the independence option such as those that may legitimately take place this weekend. Neither that context He was the most comfortable to sit at the table to negotiate the organization of competitions that involved other territories, as demonstrated by the tensions that surrounded (beyond the doubts about the sustainability of the initiative) the candidacy for the Winter Olympic Games.
Without the need to turn events such as the great cycling festival that Barcelona will experience into a banner with certain connotations, it should be celebrated as a symptom of a return to normalcy in coexistence. As it was that last weekend it was possible to host, in a public venue, the broadcast of the match that led to the victory of the team in the final of the Women’s Soccer World Cup.
#Vuelta #sign #normality