Prepping for Olympics : Barcelona Practices New Team Sport

BARCELONA, Spain —  When the word came at 1:31 p.m. on Oct. 17, 1986, people danced in the streets. After trying for decades, Barcelona had been chosen to host the Olympic Games.

Three years of prideful preparation later, already halfway to torch-lighting day in 1992, Barcelona gave a big party this month and everybody came. Alas.

A sporting spectacular programmed to be a civic exaltation and a warm-up for the XXV Olympiad instead went into the record books as municipal mortification. In the aftermath, hands are wringing and socks are drying, but nobody’s dancing.

Quest for Stardom

Overall, Olympics planning is on schedule, officials say, but recrimination and a bad case of jitters now stalk Barcelona’s quest for stardom.

The Fifth World Cup of track and field, Sept. 8-10, featured the debut of the newly renovated, 70,000-seat Montjuic Olympic Stadium, principal venue for the ’92 Games. It was a logistical disaster underlining the disharmony between national, local and regional officials responsible for planning a celebration filled with historic moment for Barcelona, with opportunities to rejuvenate and grow.

The 1992 Games also carry potent freight at other levels. For Spain, they mark a coming of age as a full, buoyant European partner after decades behind a curtain drawn by dictator Francisco Franco. In addition to the Barcelona Olympics, Spain will host a world’s fair in Seville, Expo ‘92, and a European Cultural Year in Madrid in 1992.

It will be a big year: the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of the New World, and of the expulsion of the Moors, events that led to Spain’s emergence as a nation and as a colonial power.

For Catalonia, an autonomous region of 6 million people within Spain, the Games are a special joy, a time to flaunt and enhance its identity.

“Welcome to our country,” say the tourist brochures, meaning Catalonia, not Spain. “Posa’t Guapa,” read injunctions in Catalan urging a citywide housecleaning for 1992. “Make It Beautiful.”

But the tryout earlier this month was anything but beautiful. The opening ceremonies of the track meet began 35 minutes late, just in time for television viewers across Europe to hear Catalan separatists among the Barcelona fans whistle derisively at King Juan Carlos I of Spain. “Freedom for Catalonia,” their banners demanded. “Catalonia Is an Oppressed Country.”

Most Spaniards like their king, even in assertively nationalistic Catalonia, which, by any objective measure, is about as oppressed as New England. Still, the catcalls set the tone for a weekend of hyperbole.

Tropical-Style Rain

Rain, normally a stranger to Mediterranean Barcelona at this time of year, came in tropical dimensions during the three days of competition. Barcelona’s mayor, who is also president of the Games’ organizing committee, got soaked making his welcoming address. Worse, the revamped 1929 stadium, ballyhooed as one of best in Europe, leaked, uh, olympically.

By the time the last runner had sloshed home, Barcelona taxi drivers were complaining about police restrictions on traffic at the hilltop stadium, international sportswriters had learned to hate Barcelona’s phone system, and American athletes chafed at the city’s pollution.

“We can’t deceive ourselves. This was no great ecstasy. It was an emotional day, but it was just a test,” Mayor Pasqual Maragall told a visitor in the aftermath. “Sure, there were leaks; we’ll plug them. We have three years left to meet a difficult challenge. Barcelona will meet it.”

Prosperous, Narcissistic

Maragall is a 48-year-old Socialist, a U.S.-trained urban economist who made the 1984 presentation in Los Angeles that eventually gave Barcelona the 1992 nod over Amsterdam and Paris. Barcelona, a prosperous and narcissistic port of 3 million that prides itself as Spain’s economic locomotive, had made unsuccessful tries for the Games of 1924, 1936 and 1972.

Maragall’s long-range confidence is echoed by Jordi Pujol, a 58-year-old conservative Catalan nationalist who is president of the Generaliat, as Catalonia’s regional government is called.

“It is a worrying moment. There are problems with the stadium that demand our attention, but I believe that the current problems will assure the eventual success of the Games. We have three years to repair the defects. Let’s do it,” Pujol said in an interview.

Pujol the conservative and Maragall the Socialist rule from mostly Gothic palaces across from one another in the medieval quarter that is the historic heart of Barcelona. No friends, they.

Attractive, Idealistic

“Both are attractive as politicians. They are even idealists, perhaps, but people are beginning to realize that neither is a brilliant administrator,” said Jaime Arias, deputy editor of La Vanguardia, Barcelona’s newspaper of record.

Nonetheless, much rides on their administrative and political skills.

For Barcelona, the Olympics mean a historic turning point. A decaying waterfront industrial neighborhood split by the oldest railroad tracks in Spain has been demolished. Suddenly, handsome Barcelona is a seaside city again. The 2.5-mile strip of recovered land has become beaches, promenades, a marina and the planned site of an Olympic village for 15,000 athletes. Once the Games end, the athletes’ apartments will go to Barcelonan families, but the new look will endure.

In addition, as part of a $6-billion public Olympics budget, Barcelona will also get new athletic facilities, an improved airport, a badly needed ring road and other infrastructural improvements. The private sector will build eight new hotels, and six cruise ships will anchor to help house an estimated 400,000 visiting sports fans.

“The Games have been planned to accommodate the growth of the city,” said Pedro Palacios, spokesman for the Barcelona Olympic Organizing Committee.

Wed to Eminence

Barcelona, a tad smaller in population than Madrid, is a city wed to literary, artistic, and architectural eminence. It is the wellspring of Spanish publishing, of the artists Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro and of the architect Antonio Gaudi, whose fantasies are municipal treasures.

It was also the capital of the losing Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, and Franco never forgot that. But after being suppressed during the Franco era, Catalan language, customs and traditions are again flourishing.

Now, Pujol seeks even greater autonomy for Catalonia within Spain. He sometimes twits visiting officials from Madrid by addressing them in Catalan, which is closer to Latin than Spanish. A handful of Catalan hotheads on the political fringes demand independence and threaten to attack the Games.

Faced with all these challenges, coordination among national, regional and local governments has not always been smooth, and there are thunderheads on the horizon.

“If one of the three is out of step, nothing gets done. Power-sharing is very costly. They always have trouble with our plans,” said Maragall, gesturing toward Pujol’s palace across the street.

To complete Barcelona’s Olympic remodeling, Maragall seeks $130 million for a road that would link the new beltway to the airport, and another $130 million for what he says is a necessary extension of the Barcelona subway to yoke the four different Olympic venues within the city.

Maragall said the regional Catalan government should build the road, and either the regional government or the national government of fellow Socialist Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez should underwrite the subway construction.

“Barcelona is taking these Games as a challenge for its own future. Some of the infrastructure is not strictly needed for the Games,” replied Pujol. “Barcelona wants to do it all. We and the central government say we’ll do what we can. We can’t do everything in four years.”

He said the new airport road isn’t needed and that Madrid should pay for the subway extension if that is, indeed, essential.

The Olympics are like motherhood for Catalonia. Everybody is on record supporting the Games and vowing not to make them a political football. Still, the municipal-regional antipathy is an overriding fact of political life.

Pujol has been in office nine years and Maragall seven. Both prepare for the Olympics with an eye on the need to get reelected before the festivities begin: Maragall’s term is up in 1991 and Pujol’s in 1992.

After the flawed debut-in-the-rain, though, the continuing conflict of rival powers only fuels a public unease that has left reputations, as well as the Olympic Stadium, leaking.

Barcelona native Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, makes no secret of his own concern about flaws in the preparations for the Games. Meeting with Prime Minister Gonzalez on Wednesday, he urged greater participation by the national government.

“Time is running out,” he warned. “Flashing red lights are no longer useful. What are needed are drastic and urgent decisions.”