BARCELONA has planned a huge celebration of the 25th anniversary of its hosting the Olympic Games this month, with the same musicians who played at the 1992 event back on stage.
Archer Antonio Rebollo will light a mock Olympic torch at the stadium in the north-eastern city on July 25, and it will be paraded through the streets by sports personalities from Catalunya and elsewhere in the country who were competing at the games a quarter of a century ago – including Juan Antonio San Epifanio, alias 'Epi'; Nacho Solozábal, Paralympic athlete Teresa Perales, and medal-winning women's grass hockey team member Elisabeth, niece of the then mayor Pasqual Maragall.
Former member of the band La Fura dels Baus, Hansel Cereza, will be artistic director once again as he was in summer 1992, whilst the group who played in the closing ceremony, Los Manolos, will perform in the Plaça de Catalunya, along with the Barcelona-based band Mambo Jambo.
King Felipe VI, who was then Crown Prince Felipe of Asturias and who competed in the Spanish sailing team at the 1992 games, has been invited.
Numerous other activities will take place on the last Tuesday in July, most of which will be at the Olympic Stadium on the Montjuïc mountain.
City authorities recalled that an entire generation of young adults, teenagers and children – anyone, in fact, aged under 25 and possibly up to 30 – who would not have been born in time to experience the Olympics in their home metropolis or would have been too young to remember the games, and wants them to enjoy the atmosphere again in their lifetime.
The 25th anniversary festival is also for older adults who were there at the time to relive one of Barcelona's most historic moments.
One of the main musical acts at the Catalunya capital's Olympic Games was the famous duet, Barcelona, between Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé – but, clearly, the former is not around to recreate it and no mention has been made of the latter as yet.
The song was released five years before the Barcelona Olympics, but resurrected as the anthem of the games in 1992, a year after Mercury's death.
