Catalonia, thanks to its entrepreneurial spirit, has achieved extraordinary international recognition in bioscience, digital innovation, sport, culture, gastronomy and health. These milestones have been achieved thanks to the drive of its regions and the city of Barcelona, ??which, despite not having the advantages granted by the capital of the State, has managed to place itself in the first positions of the rankings and it competes with the big European capitals.
This leadership is the result, on the one hand, of public-private collaboration, of the complicity between public administrations, private companies and organized civil society and, on the other, of the proven ability to organize large projects of high logistical complexity and technological Today Barcelona and Catalonia are, all over the world, synonymous with rigor and good organization. And a third factor has also been, and must continue to be, the determination to capture major events that constitute a strategic economic upheaval. In short, without the 1992 Olympic Games we would not be the cosmopolitan city we are, and without the Mobile World Congress we would not be the technological innovation hub we are today.
The RACC, which since its origins, now 117 years ago, has organized the most important sports competitions in the motor world in our country, has always believed in sport as an instrument of transformation and progress. Proof of this is the F-1 grand prix in Pedralbes from 1951 to 1954 organized by Penya Rhin and, from 1969, organized by the RACC in Montjuïc, on the “magical mountain”.
The Montjuïc relief was another example of this public-private collaboration, thanks to the determination of Sebastià Salvadó and Josep Lluís Vilaseca. In 1976 the RACC bought some land in Caldes de Malavella to build the new circuit. Since the lack of initial political will prevented the project from progressing, in 1987 the club acquired the land in Montmeló that, since 1991, has housed what is today the most important sports infrastructure in the country. As fate would have it, in 1992 the land purchased by the RACC in Caldes was used to start a new project with the European Association of Golf Players: the PGA Golf de Catalunya, a course of very high quality and very well connected.
Now, having managed to bring the America’s Cup to 2024, we can host the Ryder Cup, the most important biennial tournament in the world of golf. This growing sport already has more than 300,000 federated athletes throughout the State and more than 60 million worldwide. The last Ryder Cup held in Europe, in 2018 in Paris, had 270,000 live spectators, 920 accredited international journalists, 620 million television viewing households and generated a huge economic impact. And this is exactly what would happen in Girona’s lands, where a very high economic impact could be achieved which, moreover, would have continuity for years.
Like the Olympic Games, F-1, the Mobile World Congress or, next year, the America’s Cup, today the Ryder Cup offers us a historic opportunity to continue growing.
Now is not the time to fly like a bird if we have already shown that we know how to fly like eagles. Here we go.
Yes at the Ryder Cup in Catalonia.
