Some are retired, others are students, many have asked for two days off. Minimum age: 18 years. The maximum is decided by health and the desire to get involved – there is an 83-year-old volunteer – in the regatta that for four days will put Vilanova and la Geltrú in the global spotlight of sailing. The first preliminaries of the America’s Cup begin in four days. All the organizational machinery is in motion, also the device of volunteers. In total, 350 people who will support some races in which the defender of the America’s Cup and the five teams that aspire to take it will participate. A preliminary that anticipates, on a smaller scale but with the same intensity, what Barcelona will experience in the autumn of 2024.
The volunteer exchange, for Vilanova and also for the great regatta in Barcelona, ??was officially opened on June 7. On August 15, when the preliminary list closed (there is time until November 30 to sign up for Barcelona), 850 volunteers had signed up. Of them, about 200 are foreigners, “mainly from France and Italy, but volunteers have also signed up from New Zealand (where the defending team is from)”, explains Xavier Prat, director of the volunteer program of America’s Cup. In the case of Vilanova, “we prioritized all the volunteers in the municipality and then opened the focus”, adds Prat. Not surprisingly, the volunteering program has also been designed as a channel for citizen involvement in this top-level event.
The successful experience with the Barcelona Olympic volunteers impressed Grant Dalton, the top manager of the America’s Cup, who proposed to adapt, rather than the model, the Olympic and participatory spirit of 1992 in this event often defined as the F1 of the sea. “Being a volunteer at the Olympic Games was an incredible experience”, corroborates Jordi Fernández. Then he was 24 years old and helped the attendants at the volleyball matches. Now, at 55, he has asked for a few days of vacation – he works at the Biblioteca de Catalunya – and will support the activities held around the Race Village, in Plaça del Port de Vilanova, the epicenter of the event on land, with scheduled activities from noon until 11 p.m.
“We didn’t want the volunteers to replace hired people, but to be able to provide an extra service to the visitors and the organization and, above all, we wanted the people of Vilanova to get involved in the event”, maintains Prat. For this reason, after defining the positions that could be filled with volunteers, it was decided to call 350 people, prioritizing the residents of the municipality who had registered and the surrounding area. Three areas were defined for the volunteers: sea (half a hundred people and all of them with sailing or nautical experience), land and support for the media (there are accredited journalists from all over the world) and especially for broadcasts televisions
Training days have been called for Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, in which the volunteers will be explained what the America’s Cup is, the magnitude of the competition and the stages created in Vilanova as a general framework, as well as a brief first aid and safety training, plus specific instructions for each position. On land, they will mainly be information tasks for visitors, both in Plaça del Port and in strategic spaces, such as the beaches, from where they can follow the races, or the accesses to the city, in order to ‘indicate the spaces enabled for parking and the timetables of the shuttle buses.
