The Barcelona Olympics
Barcelona hosts the Olympic Games, rebuilds its seafront and introduces itself, and Catalonia, to the world.
- Barcelona — Robert Hughes, Knopf (1992)
- Catalonia since the Spanish Civil War: Reconstructing the Nation — Andrew Dowling, Sussex Academic Press (2013)
Under Socialist mayor Pasqual Maragall, Barcelona used the Games to transform itself: it opened the city to the sea, built new beaches, ring roads and an Olympic village on old industrial land. The ceremonies used Catalan alongside Spanish, French and English, and Els Segadors was played in front of the king. Nationalists ran a campaign of adverts reading “Freedom for Catalonia”, but the abiding image is of a joyful, cosmopolitan city in which, for a few weeks, Catalan and Spanish identities seemed to sit comfortably together.
- Barcelona — Robert Hughes, Knopf (1992)
- Catalonia since the Spanish Civil War: Reconstructing the Nation — Andrew Dowling, Sussex Academic Press (2013)
Why it matters today
1992 made Barcelona a global city and launched the tourism that now brings both wealth and resentment over rents and overcrowding. It is also remembered as a moment when Catalan and Spanish pride seemed to fit together.