Lambán will claim Sánchez to prevent him from derailing a candidacy

The president of Aragon, the socialist Javier Lambán, has announced that he will demand that the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, intervene to prevent the project of a candidacy to organize the 2030 Winter Olympics between Catalonia and Aragón "on an equal footing" derailed by what, in his opinion, is a "manifest imbalance" in the distribution of evidence.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
24 May 2022 Tuesday 04:13
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Lambán will claim Sánchez to prevent him from derailing a candidacy

The president of Aragon, the socialist Javier Lambán, has announced that he will demand that the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, intervene to prevent the project of a candidacy to organize the 2030 Winter Olympics between Catalonia and Aragón "on an equal footing" derailed by what, in his opinion, is a "manifest imbalance" in the distribution of evidence.

It is the first public reaction of the Aragonese president after learning yesterday that the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE) considered the negotiations with Aragon broken after the "eleventh" technical meeting without reaching any agreement and the door was opened to a "technical candidacy" essentially Catalan but no longer negotiating with Aragon.

Lambán has taken advantage of a press conference to present an investment at the Huesca Business and Innovation Center to respond in the form of a statement to a single question on the matter. From the outset, the Aragonese president has branded the announcement by the president of the COE, Alejandro Blanco, to present a "technical candidacy" as a "threat" and has bet that this would be very similar to the one that the Generalitat de Catalunya has always defended and has assured that his executive has no confidence in the Olympic body.

The Aragonese president has recalled that it was Pedro Sánchez who went to Aragon in September to tell his government and the Aragonese that the candidacy would be "on an equal footing" between Catalonia and Aragon and with an "equal distribution" of the tests "both in quantity as well as quality", something that, according to what he said, reassured him a lot. But he has also remarked that from the beginning the Generalitat, "which has not deceived anyone", already defended a Catalan candidacy and that Aragon was the scene of "some minor tests for which Catalonia did not have the most adequate spaces". "Something like the Champions League would be played in the Catalan Pyrenees and a domestic 7-a-side football championship would be played in the Aragonese Pyrenees," he lamented.

Lambán has recounted the attempts of his executive to try to redirect this situation to the extent that, as he has considered, in terms of snow Aragón is not at all below Catalonia, if anything "a little better". But he has recognized that the Generalitat has imposed its model, which Aragón cannot accept. For President Lambán, the Aragonese Pyrenees is the "jewel in the crown" where his government has invested a lot of money and will continue to invest and he has considered that this effort "cannot be squandered" with a candidacy in which his main competitor, the Pyrenees Catalan, it would take all the visibility with all the alpine skiing. "The Aragonese Pyrenees would be reduced to a simple troupe," he insisted.

For all these reasons, and after questioning whether the COE's proposals have been technical, since, in his opinion, they have always been political, Lambán has stated that given that before public opinion, whoever made the commitment of a candidacy "standing equality" was the President of the Government, will ask Pedro Sánchez "to make good those words that he pronounced and to intervene to prevent this exciting project from definitively derailing due to the manifest imbalance with which it is being considered".

"I would very much like the president to put order" in all this, said the Aragonese president, who has also reserved any other type of action in the political sphere, because as he has reiterated "everything is being settled in the strictly political field" .