The Copa del América is a sporting event and an opportunity. It offers the platform for Barcelona to regain its international prominence. You don’t live on myth alone. From time to time you have to dust it.
“Barcelona became known in 1992 with the Olympic Games and generated a global brand, understood as a culturally powerful, Mediterranean, open, cosmopolitan city and a city that had great transformations,” said Jordi Valls, deputy mayor of the Barcelona City Council. the Catalan capital and responsible for the area of ??Economy, Finance, Economic Promotion and Tourism.
“In 92 we discovered the beach, now we explain that we are going to discover the sea,” he stressed.
“Discovering the sea means assuming responsibilities towards the sea, and the America’s Cup is a lever to take more responsibility for what the oceans are and what the Mediterranean is,” he insisted.
This is the message from the delegation led by Valls that yesterday Thursday brought to New York the attraction of this nautical test that will take place between August and October. In the auditorium there was a good representation of the main companies in the high-end tourism sector, as well as key tourism actors from the East Coast of the United States, a coast with a lot of sailing.
Patrick Torrent, executive director of the Catalan Tourism Agency of the Generalitat, and Mateu Hernández, general director of the Barcelona Tourism consortium, also took part in the expedition.
There have been other promotions in cities directly involved in the competition with their boats. But New York is a very important place. Not only because of the relevance in terms of quantity and quality of American visitors, the most important currently, but also because of their long tradition in a cup, named by them, among sailors and fans of this country. “It is an event that feels very personal,” said Hernández.
Valls specified that responsibility towards the sea seeks to ensure that UNESCO provides Barcelona with one of the specialized cooperation centers and “is the development of a more aggressive way, in the good sense of the word, of a nautical culture,” Valls stressed. .
“We want to capture the nautical world because, in general, it has a well-being situation and it is the type of visitor that interests us,” he explained. It would be achieving the model of the coast of Croatia or the Greek islands.
A part of the presentation to this sector of specialists was dedicated to highlighting the visual impact that the world will receive with images in which “ships will be seen flying in front of the coast,” in Hernández’s metaphor. From the W hotel to the three Besòs chimneys, with the profile behind the Sagrada Família.
The audience in Manhattan was told that the estimated impact on television and the Internet will reach 1.5 billion people. This will motivate great tourist interest, although it does not have to be for the event itself. Rather, an effect similar to that of ’92 is expected, when it took a while for the seed of the Olympic Games to germinate.
On this occasion, the seed is formed by a tourism that spends, with a marked cultural character, that consumes gastronomy, that is respectful, that is curious and that feels interest in the city. “In this way we will renew the image of Barcelona before such an important public,” said Hernández in his assessment of the objectives of the trip.
