Any possible Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games bid from Catalonia in Spain is now off the table the Minister of the Presidency Laura Vilagrà confirmed Tuesday.
More than a month following the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) decision to target the French Alps for the 2030 Winter Games, Salt Lake City for 2034, and to give an exclusive bidding window to Switzerland for 2038, Vilagrà has ruled out a Catalan bid in the foreseeable future.
The Catalan News reported that the region’s executive made the decision ahead of Vilagrà’s confirmation.
On November 29 the IOC Executive Board mapped out its Winter Games plans until 2038. The 2030 and 2034 editions still need to be rubberstamped by the IOC membership at a meeting in Paris next July ahead of the Olympic Games. Switzerland has until the end of 2027 to fulfill requirements and finalize 2038 plans before the IOC can look elsewhere for a host. That leaves any other interested bidders on the sidelines for the next four years and the possibility that the next available Games may not be until 2042.
That may be too late for a joint Catalan bid from Barcelona and the Pyrenees according to secretary of the Department of Climate Action, Anna Barnadas who told Catalunya Ràdio that the impacts of climate change on temperature and precipitation in the region will make it “difficult” for the Winter Games to be “celebrated at latitudes like Catalonia’s.”
In 2022 a joint Barcelona and Pyrenees 2030 Winter Games bid was in the running alongside Sapporo in Japan, Vancouver in Canada and Salt Lake City in the United States but the Spanish bid called off plans when joint partners couldn’t come to terms on the proposed venue allocation. Vancouver also stepped back when it failed to secure provincial government funding and Sapporo hit pause amid the Tokyo 2020 bribery scandal.
The IOC decided to reset the bid process in December 2022, allowing other candidates to enter into discussions.
Sweden, Switzerland and France then came forward, and a Catalan bid without Aragon in the Pyrenees made a new proposal to the IOC.
The new Spanish bid since fizzled and was not considered for targeted dialogue when the IOC announced interested candidates last October.
The cancelation was celebrated on X (formerly Twitter) by opposition group “Stop JJOO” that had been campaigning against staging the Games and developing a Winter Sports tourism economy in a region where climate change would later make it obsolete.
A statement by the organization said it “is satisfied with the government’s decision to definitively withdraw the candidacy” and the news “represents a victory for neighbors over the interests of the economic elites.”
The next Winter Games will be staged in Northern Italy by Milan-Cortina 2026.
