More wood. While the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, met with Pedro Sánchez and the King, the head of the Aragonese Government, Javier Lambán, announced today in plenary session of the Cortes of his autonomous community that he will directly address the IOC to inform you of “the real chain of events”, of the “farce” of negotiating the bid for the 2030 Winter Olympics and its “unfortunate future”. Lambán's initiative may represent the zenith in the already deteriorated relations of the Aragonese president with the president of the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE). A relationship that heated up even more yesterday when the Minister of the Presidency, Mayte Pérez, accused Alejandro Blanco of acting as a "political commissioner" of Catalonia and of provoking a "first level territorial conflict", for which she urged him to "give step back" and withdraw from the negotiation for the candidacy.
Lambán has insisted on this last idea today. Thus, he has affirmed that it is Blanco who is provoking the confrontation with Catalonia when he raises the possibility that a Catalan candidacy and another from Aragonese compete "to see who wins the day". For the head of the Aragonese Executive, the president of the COE is acting with "irresponsibility".
However, and despite the reproaches, the Aragonese Cabinet does not cease in its efforts. Today Lambán has released a new proposal prepared by his government. The basis of this new proposal is that alpine skiing is again divided -discipline where the queen events reside- by communities according to whether they are male or female. The COE ruled out a similar idea from the Aragonese Executive at the beginning of April. The rest of the disciplines would be completed with the distribution in three more lots with the intention of ensuring fairness. Aragón is willing for Catalonia to be the first to choose its option for each of the lots
Be that as it may, this willingness of the President of Aragon to inform the IOC of what happened will be accompanied by two other initiatives: he will ask to appear before the General Commission of the Autonomous Communities of the Senate to explain the project and its context, and he will inform "everyone country and all citizens with objectivity of the reality of the situation of the candidacy".
The president of Aragon has been disappointed, since, according to what he said, when the Olympic candidacy was proposed, he understood that he was going to work on "a white paper". “If the candidacy excited me for something, it is because I understood that it was a magnificent opportunity for the independentistas to return to the constitutional fold”, he underlined before remarking that “with the passage of time I have realized that we had been surprised in our good faith , that we had been deceived and that yes, there was a pre-existing project which is that of Catalonia and that the COE has only wanted to drag us Aragonese to that candidacy”.
Likewise, Lambán has regretted not having been able to speak with Sánchez about the candidacy, despite the fact that he requested his mediation some time ago by letter. However, the poor relationship between the two is known - and admitted by the Aragonese Government itself. In this sense, the mayor of Zargoza and president of the PP in Aragón, Jorge Azcón, has criticized Sánchez, since, in his opinion, he is creating a problem by not responding to the request for an interview that Lambán requested.
