BARCELONA

Morikawa Noboru, November 1991

In 1936, Barcelona made a bid to host the Olympic Games. It lost to Berlin. How might the course of history have changed, sporting history at least, had Barcelona succeeded? Over half a century later in 1992, the Catalan capital won the prize of hosting the XXV Olympiad. As it turned out, these were the first Games to feature a single, unified German team since the dawn of the Cold War, and it was the first time South Africa was allowed to compete since 1960. LÕUomo visited Barcelona as the city prepared to transform itself into a billion-dollar infrastructure investment. It was already a hive of architectural activity, undertaking to do in eight years, as the new millennium approached, what it had singularly failed to do in the previous fifty. For the far-seeing municipality, the quality of cultural life was considered perhaps the main legacy of the 1992 Olympics. Picasso, Miró and Tàpies had such strong attachments to the city that their example fired up a spate of one-man museums and a revamp of existing ones.

Once the Catalan city had thrilled to the partnership of Eusebi Güell and Antoni Gaudí, and now it would welcome Richard Meier, Jean Nouvel, Herzog & de Meuron and Gae Aulenti. Did the legacy succeed? Barcelona has been consistently in the top 10 of the world’s most visited cities since the turn of the century (with Spain the second most visited countr y).