The Generalitat de Catalunya has ensured that “nothing is broken or closed” regarding the possible candidacy for the 2030 Winter Olympics and the clashes with Aragón in this regard, reaffirming that the Government’s position “has not changed, it is exactly the same”.
After last week’s disagreement between the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, and the president of Aragon, Javier Lambán, when the latter suspended the meeting that they were to hold in Balaguer (Lleida), the Catalan president met yesterday in Barcelona with the president of the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE), Alejandro Blanco, to reduce tensions.
Within this framework, Lambán announced this Tuesday to the media that the contacts between Aragón and Catalonia to try to set up a joint candidacy for the 2030 Winter Olympics will be resumed after the Olympic Games hosted by Beijing from February 4 to 20 and while Both will focus on technical aspects.
A calendar that the Catalan government has avoided confirming, limiting itself to pointing out that yesterday’s meetings with Blanco were “positive” and that the Government “is still where it was”, according to the spokeswoman for the Catalan Executive, Patricia Plaja.
“There is nothing broken or closed on our part. We are very clear about our position on the Games”, Plaja has suggested, in a play on words in Catalan (“Res trencat ni res tancat”).
As he stated, at the press conference after the meeting of the Generalitat Executive Council, Catalonia’s position on the Games “has not changed at all”: “It is true that progress has been made, that there have been meetings, but we are right where we were.”
The Government is clear that it does not want to enter into “controversies with anyone” and that Catalonia’s position is “very clear”, Plaja stressed.
And it is that the intention of Catalonia to lead alone a candidacy for the Winter Olympic Games, open to “collaboration” with other territories only for some disciplines, collides with the will of the Spanish Olympic Committee and Aragon of a joint project and in equal footing between the two communities.
On the citizen consultation to the veguería of Alt Empordà and Vall d’Aran, Plaja has reaffirmed that the Government “will carry out the consultation as it should, in the terms that it had announced and consulting this veguería”.