Should Catalonia bid to host the 2030 Winter Olympics?

The idea of hosting a Winter Olympics has been discussed in Catalonia for a long time. In fact, the 2022 Games were first targeted all the way back in 2010, but no consensus was reached. 

The prospect was pushed further and further back, first to 2026, and now to 2030, and in the summer of 2020, the Catalan government, then led by former president Quim Torra, formally endorsed the candidacy of the Pyrenees-Barcelona to host the Winter Games. 

The administration has since changed its makeup, with the senior and junior coalition partners swapping roles, but even now the executive led by Pere Aragonès is still in favor of hosting the Games. 

Have a listen to our latest podcast for a full report on the 2030 Olympic plans: 

Business groups and sporting organizations are pushing for the bid to take place, while political groups are largely mixed on the issue. 

Yet, backers of the proposal have considerable opposition from social groups. The platform Stop Olympic Games (in Catalan, ‘Stop Jocs Olímpics’, often shortened to ‘Stop JJOO’), a platform made up of Pyrenees residents and environmentalists, have vociferously rejected the idea. 

Stop JJOO have even received the backing of one of the most famous sportspeople in Catalonia, the celebrated trail runner and mountaineer Kilian Jornet. 

How hosting the Games would work

Plans have not yet been finalized, so nothing is official yet. Despite this, there are some things we can infer about the bid. Outdoor events for skiing and snowboarding will be held in the Pyrenees mountains, while indoor events will take place in cities. 

Barcelona will play host to some of the major events, possibly in the ice rink that form part of FC Barcelona’s facilities, but it only has space for just over 1,200 fans. Elsewhere, Palau Sant Jordi can easily be converted into an ice rink and can welcome 17,000 spectators. 

There are also negotiations ongoing between Catalonia, the Spanish Olympic Committee, and the region of Aragon about playing a role in the bid. This could mean Zaragoza or Jaca could also host some events. The Jaca ice rink can fit some 6,700 spectators. 

However, the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE) was recently forced to urged "unity" from Catalonia and Aragon in order to present a 2030 Winter Olympics bid together, amid some discrepancies between the two regions over the bid. 

Something that complicates matters are Olympic events such as the skeleton and ski jumping, for which there are no facilities nearby that could be used. As such, organizers are sounding out collaboration opportunities with Sarajevo in Bosnia, which held the 1984 Winter Games, or even Switzerland or Italy. 

Arguments for and against

Climate crisis

“It makes no sense to host a Winter Olympics in a place where, as climate change goes on, the snow is becoming thinner and more scarce,” Pau Lozano of the Stop Olympic Games platform says. 

A lot of the snow used for leisure skiing in the Pyrenees even nowadays is artificial. “In the middle of climate and energy crises and drought, it makes no sense to make artificial snow if there is none, with all the energy and water consumption it would need,” Lozano says.

Ferran Canudas, president of the environmentalist association Group in Defence of Nature in Berguedà, warns there’s a possibility the mountainous area might not even have snow by 2030. 

Backers of the bid, however, assure that sustainability is at the heart of the bid’s plans. 

Gerard Esteva, president of the Catalan Sports Federations Union, and Monica Bosch, president of the Catalan Winter Sports Federation, both point out that the International Olympic Committee and the candidacy is working toward a model of the Games that is sustainable in all ambits; activity, investment, and respecting of the environment. 

Facilities and infrastructure

One major problem that has arisen in past Games is the issue of ‘white elephants’ - facilities and stadia that have fallen into abandonment once the mega global event is finished. 

Those in favor of the Games point out that the bid will only use facilities that are already in place, and potential collaborations with Sarajevo, Switzerland, or Italy are being mooted for events for which there are no facilities in the area.

Monica Bosch says the International Olympic Committee “doesn’t want candidate cities without a well-argued legacy programme of all the facilities. They want to know the future use of all the sports venues, and the Pyrenees-Barcelona project from the beginning has worked with these principles.” 

Beyond Olympic event facilities, roads, public transport, and accommodation needs will have to be taken into consideration. One of the arguments in favor of the bid is that the event can serve as the perfect reason to improve development in the Pyrenees region.

“I think that the final goal of organizing an Olympic Games has to be to improve the quality of life of the people who live in the Olympic areas,” Bosch says. “The Pyrenees regions in the past years have had a lack of investment and maybe a lack of attention. The Olympic Games have demonstrated that they’re a perfect dynamizing tool.”

Environmentalists, on the other hand, aren’t buying this. 

Canudas and Lozano both say only special business interests and lobby groups are being listened to, while the plans will accelerate the depopulation of the area. 

“We find ourselves in a situation where a self-sustained industrial network is being destroyed in favor of a model that only brings precariousness and extreme seasonality,” Lozano believes. The tourism sector accounts for one-third of the jobs in the Pyrenees, but the Stop JJOO activist says that this precariousness will seep into other sectors, bringing lower wages.

Meanwhile, attracting more and more people to the area will only lead to more environmental harm, putting too much pressure on the ecosystems of the Pyrenees.

Canudas also argues that fewer roads are needed, which could lead to more hectic traffic jams in his hometown especially on weekends, and more focus needs to go toward improving public transport. His home county of Berguedà doesn’t even have a train station.  

Costs

One of the major controversies about hosting Olympic Games in recent years has been the rising costs of putting on such a show, with local taxpayers often bearing the brunt of this and seeing little in return. 

This is another point of contention between both sides. Those in favour say the cost for Catalonia to host the Games would be around €1.2 billion. A €900 million grant coming from the IOC and the remainder being covered by ticketing and private sponsorships means, they say, the cost for the Catalan taxpayer would be minimal. 

However, those against dispute the foundations of these arguments, pointing out that they have seen no report that suggests these costs estimates could truly be the case. 

Additionally, they point out that it is impossible to know how much the Games would cost when the project has not yet been finalized. 

Games in the past have often had a tendency to go over the initially proposed budget, and estimated costs for the last Winter Olympics held in South Korea in 2018 were as much as ten times as high as the mooted €1.2 billion budget for Catalonia. 

What next?

In January, results of a Catalan government-funded survey that found around three in four people find the idea of hosting a Winter Olympic Games “interesting.” Around 1,500 people were asked their opinion, including around 300 residents from the Pyrenees. 

However, Pau Lozano discredits this survey, believing it was specifically worded in a way to help elicit a positive response. 

The Catalan government are in favor of pushing ahead with the idea, but, they say, only on the condition that the locals want it as well. As such, a public consultation is planned to take place some time in the spring. 

A referendum among the residents of six counties in the mountainous region will ask for their stance, and authorities say it will be binding, meaning, they would drop the idea if a majority ‘no’ vote is returned. 

However, details of the proposed referendum are not yet known, between the date, the exact wording, or if residents will have a complete vision of the project before the day of the vote in order to be informed. 

If authorities go ahead with the idea and land the 2030 Winter Olympics on our shores and slopes, then it would be the first time a Games will be held in the Pyrenees, after taking place numerous times in the Alps.