Laura Vilagrà, Councilor of the Presidency of the Generalitat. /
The Government believes that an agreement with Aragón is no longer viable
Neither 50% nor in collaboration with the Government of Aragon. The Catalan Government closed the door on Wednesday to opt for the Olympic venue hand in hand with Aragon and has pressured the central Executive and the COE to endorse a solely Catalan candidacy. The Minister of the Presidency of the Generalitat, Laura Vilagrà, defended on Catalunya Ràdio the sole candidacy of Catalonia, an approach that she has already transferred to the Spanish Olympic Committee.
The COE has opted from day one for a shared project between Catalonia and Aragon. There was a technical agreement on the distribution of venues, but the Executive of Aragon later dropped. The initial project was a joint team between Catalonia, Aragon and the COE, but the Government of Aragon has not considered the distribution of venues fair and the Spanish candidacy for 2030 is currently up in the air.
The Government stated bluntly that “the Olympic Games are not off the hook because one of the parties is Catalonia.” And in the face of speculation that the COE could give up being the headquarters in 2030, the Generalitat proposes that “the option of presenting a Catalan candidacy be valued, given that for the moment the other option has had no way out.”
“We have a minister from the PSC, Minister Iceta, and I believe that he will not miss out on the opportunity to have Olympic options,” Vilagrà pressed. In his opinion, the possibility of reaching an agreement with Aragón is unfeasible. «It is at a point of no return, and not because the Government has not put efforts in the technical part, but clearly, and the president of the COE has explained it, because the Government of Aragón put political criteria and made anti-Catalanism emerge again », he finished. After the ‘Pegasus case’ and the controversy over investments in infrastructure in Catalonia, the Olympics is presented as the next battle between the Government and the Government, if the project does not go ahead.
The president of Aragon, Javier Lambán, and the first secretary of the PSC, Salvador Illa, held a meeting in Zaragoza on Tuesday, in which they discussed the candidacy for the Winter Olympics. Lambán maintains that Aragón is harmed in the distribution of venues and disciplines defended by the COE and signed by the Generalitat. “The Aragonese Pyrenees is not worse in terms of seasons than the Catalan one, it is at least the same and surely better, therefore, accepting discriminatory treatment is unacceptable,” he said days ago in Ser.
