The Government of Aragon has sent this Monday to the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE) its latest proposal to save the candidacy with Catalonia to the 2030 Winter Olympics, pending a new meeting to continue the negotiations that could be this same week, and has urged him not to “relinquish his duties” because “Catalonia is talking to Sarajevo as if it were a State”.
The Minister of Education, Culture and Sports of the Aragonese Government, Felipe Faci, has confirmed, in statements to the media, that this morning he has given instructions to send the Aragonese proposal by email, which he presented in the plenary session of the autonomous parliament last Thursday President Javier Lambán, and which consists of dividing the tests into four lots with two options each, those of alpine skiing by gender, and the disposition to be chosen first in each case by the Generalitat.
However, Faci is aware that the president of the COE, Alejandro Blanco, has the Aragonese proposal, with an election system, in his opinion, “fair”, which guarantees the balance between both territories and that if it is rejected “it is because they don’t want to guarantee that equality”.
In this regard, he has insisted that Blanco argues that alpine skiing cannot be divided when it has been done in the last Winter Games in Beijing and will be done in the next ones in Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo 2026, and he regrets that refers to the lack of sustainability while proposing to separate cross-country skiing and biathlon so that they go to Formigal and Candanchú, and that facilities have to be duplicated taking into account that the IOC says they must be in the same place.
He has reiterated that Aragón does not have any technical report that guarantees which facilities are better for the tests or that says that the Catalan resort of La Molina is better for alpine skiing than the Aragonese ones of Cerler or Formigal and has influenced Blanco’s contradictions , the last one being the two communities that agree when it was the COE that called Aragon to participate in the candidacy and therefore, the one that has to respond to what Aragon asks.
“This has to be solved by the COE”, he remarked, since in addition, according to Faci, “Catalonia is talking to Sarajevo as if it were a State”. “The COE has to intervene and cannot abandon its functions,” he warned.
The Minister has assured that the Government of Aragon “has always been for there to be a joint candidacy with Catalonia, and continues to be”, but what he cannot accept is that it does not guarantee equality and fairness, which is what had been engaged White.
