Barcelona : urban identity 1992-2002

"I want to reflect on the city's emergence from dictatorship through the Olympic phase, where the urban left (in a range of guises) found itself having to rethink how its politics fitted the changing city and how the city, in turn, fitted the transformation of the political options of the centr-left. After briefly tracing the evolution of this relationship, I will discuss the changing nature of the old town, the growing dogma of a technologically modernised city, the impact of deteriorralisation of the city's icons, primarity its football club, and finally will draw some comparisons between the 1992 Olympics and the city's next "megaevent" planned for 2004."