Alejandro Blanco, president of the COE, has indirectly pressured Aragón during the last month to accelerate the agreement that should lead to the presentation of the joint candidacy before the IOC. In recent weeks he has influenced this in different public appearances, and even set May 20 as the last frontier to carry out the 2030 Games. This Tuesday he has denied it in Catalonia Radio Pere Mirospecial adviser to Olympic President Thomas Bach. “For the International Olympic Committee there is no deadline, it is something that is marked from the COE to decide whether to launch a candidacy”.
This statement proves Aragón right, from where it has been repeated several times that no Olympic representative has ever given them any date on which the limit of the project is established.
Miró affirmed that the IOC does not oblige the population to carry out any consultation, but it does oblige them to present supporting evidence. “It is better to add than to subtract”, in reference to a joint or solo candidacy by Catalonia or Aragon. “From the IOC, the process to get to choose a city or a country that organizes the Games goes through a process of permanent dialogue and we have not set any date. This dialogue is being developed not only with the Pyrenees but with other cities in the world. So for us that limit does not exist and has been set by someone from our house (COE).”
“I am the special adviser to the president of the IOC, so I can only judge things from the point of view of the IOC”, he said, recalling that Bach will be in Madrid on the 1st. “I will accompany him. We will go for another topic, the help that sport can give to the world’s refugees. If we will talk about other things… obviously when we visit a country that talks about many things. And the topic of the candidacy for 2030 is an important issue, but is not the purpose of the trip”.
Miró explained that compromises and disagreements in candidacies around the world always exist. “I’ve been with the IOC for 30 years and I have seen hundreds of potential candidates with internal problems, like is logic. But in this case, from the IOC we understand that this is something derived from the interest that the Games arouse today.”
If everyone wants to be part of this Olympic project, he continued, “for us it is a reading that means that interest in the Games continues to be very important. As I have said in hundreds of candidacies, in the end there is an agreement and, within my neutrality, I hope that it is the strongest possible and that it goes ahead.
Aragon potential
“I would like to remind you that Jaca has already presented candidacies for the Winter Olympics twice (1998, 2002, 2010 and 2014). Therefore, Aragon has great potential. Within my neutrality, there is a report from an IOC technician who was in Catalonia and assessed the facilities very positively. Therefore, Catalonia has great potential, Aragon has another… From here on, it is already known that It is always better to add than to subtract.said Miró, who confirmed that there is “very big” interest from Salt Lake City, Sapporo and almost certainly Vancouver. “So decisions are made not just based on the potential of one candidacy, but this one and others.”
It is therefore clear that there will come a time when Alejandro Blanco will have to decide whether to continue with the negotiations, “which for us do not have an end date”and if he decides to continue to 2030 “or later”, according to all the parties involved, “that is what he should do”.
Regarding the consultation prepared for July in some regions of the Catalan Pyrenees, in the IOC “we do not force a referendum, but what we do want is for the candidate to show us in a clear and evident way the support he has”. There are different ways to do it. “There are very democratic countries that have been based exclusively on the opinion of mayors or groups in society. It depends on each one. I read these days that there was support from more than 60% support for the Games”.
The Barcelona brand
Lastly, Miró did not want to dwell on the name that the candidacy should bear, still undecided, although he highlighted the potential of the Barcelona brand, “the model in which a city and an entire country chose how to use the Games as absolute tool for the development of the city and for a total change”.
What Barcelona did “was later the model that everyone looked for in the world. So the Barcelona brand is very important in the Olympic world, but it is the candidacy that must choose the name, we do not enter into that at all”.
