The disappointment, discouragement and barely contained anger have made a dent among the political representatives and the social and tourist agents of the Aragonese valleys of Tena, Candanchú-Astún and Benasque, possible scenarios of a winter Olympic Games in the Pyrenees that, at least in 2030, they will no longer see the light.
At the beginning of the week, when it was already suspected that there would be no agreement for the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE) to present a consensual candidacy to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the Association of Local Entities of the Aragonese Pyrenees (Adelpa) signed a document in the who gave their unconditional support to the project and encouraged all parties to reach a consensus, considering "that its advantages should outweigh the differences". They also warned that "the future of the peoples of the Pyrenees of Aragon and Catalonia is at stake."
Mayors belonging to different formations (PP, PSOE, PAR and CHA) are present in this body, along with business associations.
Eusebio Echart, vice president of Adelpa and mayor of Campo for the PAR, emphasized "the return that the Olympic event would have had in the territory, not only economically, but also the great international tourist impact, by being able to show the entire planet the quality landscape of the mountain range”.
In the document, the members of Adelpa lamented this "wasted opportunity to be able to build expensive infrastructures, difficult to finance, that would allow our municipalities to advance."
"Here, in the Benasque valley, we have completed the construction of the N-260 from Campo to Castejón de Sos, but we still need to continue until the connection with Catalonia, something that would have been streamlined with the Olympic project," adds Echart.
Marcel Iglesias, mayor of Bonansa (PSOE) and president of the Ribagorza region, also showed his disappointment that the Olympic project had not materialized and confessed that he had missed "more generosity on the part of the government of Aragon and the Generalitat de Catalonia”. “Here, the ones who played it were the Pyrenees, more than Zaragoza or Barcelona” and he lamented that “those of us directly interested would not have had more of a leading role in the negotiations with the COE”. As for the future, he thinks that “the 2034 candidacy will come out if territorial conflicts are not put on the table. If not, it will be doomed to failure again.
Jesús Jericó, mayor of Sallent de Gállego for the PP did not hide his tremendous anger at the situation. “Neither the COE, nor the central, Aragonese and Catalan governments have lived up to their responsibilities. The Catalan proposal, which monopolized all alpine skiing for itself, was not fair, and the technicians of the Government of Aragon should have rejected it and proposed another alternative from the beginning. And the Spanish government has acted as a hostage of its Catalan partners. It has lacked height of sight in all”.
Jericó also complains that "the municipalities were summoned in the 80th or 90th minute of the game, when the situation was already very tangled."
Fernando Sánchez, mayor of Canfranc (PSOE), regrets the "losses" that the ski resorts of Astún-Candanchú and its region entail, the non-performance of the Winter Olympics. “Infrastructure projects worth 300 or 400 million euros had been proposed, which would improve mobility and take cars off the road, and now perhaps they will never be carried out,” he explains.
In the tourism sector, the news fell like a bucket of cold water. José María Ciria, president of the Association of Tourism Entrepreneurs of the Benasque Valley, lamented the outcome. “We had high hopes for her. It will have to be resumed by 2034, but if Madrid shows up for the Summer Games, our chances will decrease”.
None of the people consulted welcomes Alejandro Blanco's proposal that by 2034 two or more candidates be presented and that the COE choose one. They are more in favor of working for a single candidacy that encompasses Aragon, Catalonia and areas of Navarra or Andorra.
Nor can we forget the difficult and tense situation that some militants, positions and socialist groups in this province have experienced, who have not always been comfortable with the negotiating strategy set by the Government of Aragon on this issue. "We were the most interested in the talks between Aragon, the Government, the COE and Catalonia ending successfully, because we are risking our greater or lesser political presence in the territory," a militant who prefers not to give his name told us. . They also point out that the first meeting of Lambán and the councilor Felipe Faci with the mayors and businessmen of the area was already with the negotiation process very advanced. “More than to listen to our proposals, they came to ask us to fully support their maximum strategy, when we would have been more pragmatic. Having tests in all the valleys with ski slopes, as requested by the Adelpa document, would have been a success”.
Another gesture that some Huesca followers of Lambán did not like was that he did not attend the meeting in Balaguer (Lleida) with President Aragonès last January. “If you get up from a meeting you will never achieve your objectives and if you don't go to it, you can already give up the battle for lost”, said a veteran socialist from Huesca.
