From: sust@sdac.harvard.edu (Mariano Sust)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.spain
Subject: Barcelona in the news
Date: 25 Jul 1992 09:38:34 -0500
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

Transcribo un articulo aparecido ayer (viernes 24 julio) en el Boston Globe
(especial Olimpico) sobre Barcelona. Enjoy it !

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Article del Boston Globe d'avui Divendres 24, pg.54

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Foto de les fonts de Montjuich en plan "magic", la pujada de la Fira il.luminada
i el Palau Nacional (?) amb els lasers apuntant al cel (oooohhh !)

Planol de Europa-Sud amb Portugal, France, Italy, Africa, the Mediterranean Sea,
... Spain i ... Catalonia ! Situant Barcelona i Valencia (com a co-seu olimpica)
+ planols de Catalunya i Barcelona, situant els diferents esports als llocs on
es faran i el calendari de competicions.

Pre-titol, en negreta [ ]

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[ WITH THE DEATH OF FRANCO A CLOUD OF DESPAIR LIFTED IN SPAIN, AND NOW
CATALONIANS HOPE THE OLYMPIC SPOTLIGHT SIGNALS THE START OF A BRIGHT FUTURE
AS ... ]


BARCELONA HAS ITS DAY IN SUN


By John Powers

Barcelona.- Franco is still dead. If there were no other reason to invite the
world to a 16-day party by the Mediterranean, that would suffice for the
Catalonians.
      When El Caudillo ran Spain with a mailed fist, he kept this proud and
prickly city under his thumb. Children were not allowed to study Catalan, the
language of their parents. And the citizenry was forbidden to perform the
sardana, the languid and graceful dance that has nothing in common with the
flamenco.
      When Franco died, Barcelona and Catalonia came alive again. And the Games
of the XXVth Olympiad, which begin tomorrow evening in the renovated 69-year-old
stadium atop Montjuich, is their coming-out party.
      Barcelona has spent an estimated $10 billion (90 percent of it in urban
renewal and sports construction) getting ready to have the world in for tapas
and sherry.
      The city has transformed its once depressing waterfront into a string of
beaches, built a pair of ring roads to ease its stifling traffic, expanded its
airport and doubled its green space in five years. It has also built or
freshened up nearly three dozen sports venues, several of which -such as the
Sant Jordi gymnastics arena- are architectural marvels.
      It isn't the first time this 2,000-year-old seaport has remade itself. The
Gothic Quarter, which still exists, was built during the Middle Ages. The
Eixample (Enlargement) blossomed in he last half of the 19th century, when the
city needed elbow room.
      This time Barcelona has used the Olympics as a catalyst to reclaim its
pre-Franco beauty and to propel itself into the next millennium. The Games also
served as a declaration of independence for Catalonia, which views itself not as
a region of Spain but as a neighbor.
      If the Catalonians had their way, they'd march by themselves in the
opening ceremonies under their own flag. They've already formed their own
Olympic committee, though the IOC doesn't recognize it.
      Not that Catalonia has been reluctant to make its case to the world. This
week, the autonomous government took out full-page ads in both Time and Newsweek
to clear up any misconceptions about just where these Games are being held.
      Catalonia, its six million people insist, is "a country in Spain with its
own culture, language and identity.". "Buenos dias" is something they say in
Madrid. Here, it's "bon dia".
      Franco would have put the Catalonians under martial law before he'd have
let them teach their kids to say bon dia. That's why it's so important to the
citizenry that these Games are staged with efficiency and style.
      This is both the home of Gaudi and Dali and Miro and a brawny industrial
center. Yet for decades, the city has been symbolized by the Sagrada Familia,
the quirky but brilliant eight-spired church that was frozen in mid-birth when
architect Antoni Gaudi was killed by a trolley in 1926.
      Sagrada Familia was a symbolic catalan enterprise, the snobbish Madrilenos
snickered. Banderillas of modernist frosting stuck into a half-baked cake,
abandoned for half a century because nobody could figure what to do with them.
      The cynics said that Barcelona could never pull off the Summer Games, that
the city would be overwhelmed by the sheer number of projects that needed to be
pulled together and pushed along.
      "The stereotype of the Spaniard, the Catalan, the Mediterranean man as a
hospitable and friendly, but disorganized and undisciplined person persisted,"
said Josep Miquel Abad, who heads the Olympic organizing committee.
      Yet Barcelona has pulled it off. The venues were completed on time and the
Games are expected to turn a $350 million profit. Nobody -not even the
Catalonians- expected that.
      "We did not aim to make a profit," concedes Barcelona mayor Pasqual
Maragall. "All we wanted was not to have a financial loss."
      The city has waited so long for the Games that it was willing to take them
on any terms. Barcelona began bidding on them back when Franco was a second
lieutenant, but the Lords of the Rings always looked elsewhere.
      Barcelona wasn't supposed to get the Olympics, either. Paris, which wanted
to celebrate the centennial of Baron de Coubertin's brainstorm to revive the
Games, had the inside track.
      Some critics said that homeboy Juan Antonio Samaranch, who runs the
International Olympic Committee, twisted arms. Truth is, it was time the Games
came to Spain. Virtually every other major country in Western Europe -France,
Holland, Belgium,England, Germany, Italy- had held the Summer Olympics, some of
them twice.
      As long as Franco was alive, Barcelona couldn't even get out of its
regional in the Olympics chase. But once he took his final "turn for the worse"
in 1975 and the city was free to reinvent itself again, getting the Games seemed
inevitable.
      Barcelona, after all, goes back before Christ. It outlasted the Greeks,
Romans, the Visigoths, the Arabs and the Francs. Franco was merely a blip on the
time line.

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Apa, a disfrutar-ho !!!

Mari`a



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Maria' Sust
osease: Mariano Sust (no se me dejen el acento !)
Harvard School of Public Health
Department of Biostatistics
Boston
sust@sdac.harvard.edu   o    sust@hsph.harvard.edu