According to legend, Pirene was a beautiful princess who lived on the Iberian Peninsula, where there were many boyfriends. But Piren loved Hercules, gathered with him in secret in the woods until the princess's father, Tubal, found her and decided to banish Hercules. Piren did not lose the hope of reuniting with his beloved. He was looking through the woods until one day he met Gerion, a three-headed monster. Gerion also wanted to court Pirene.
Gerion burned trees to prevent the escape of Pirene, his painful ears alerted Hercules, who arrived in time to express his eternal love, but not to prevent his death. According to Greco-Roman mythology, Hercules, shattered by pain, began to build mountains of stone to bury Pirene, forming what we now know as the Pyrenees.

In recent years, the Pyrenean mountain range and the communities inhabiting it have flown: Candidacy for the Barcelona Winter Olympic Games. Thanks to social mobilization and political calculations, the Spanish Government has, for the time being, refused to expand Prate airport. It is undoubtedly a good precedent and a necessary victory for the Catalan social movements.

But, however, as Barricada sang, there is no truce. Public administrations agreed to formalise the Olympic candidacy before the summer: They presented the credentials to the International Olympic Committee to host the edition of the 2030 winter games. The government led by Pere Aragonès has declared that the project devised by convergent Damia Calvet has been kept in a drawer for the drafting of a new project that guarantees the environmental sustainability of the event.

Many of us wonder how this will be possible. Pyrenees’ temperature has increased by 1.3°C in the last 50 years as a result of global warming and the average snowfall has risen more than 200 meters, according to the Catalan Meteorology Agency. According to a recent study by the Pyrenees Ecology Institute, the snowflake thickness will be reduced by 30% and will last 20 to 30 days less per year at a height of 2,000 heights. According to another report from the University of Grenoble, between 2030 and 2050, 80% of the ski resorts in the Pyrenees will depend on artificial snow.

Given this scenario of adverse scientific evidence, the only way to make the candidature for the Winter Olympic Games viable is by expanding and improving lifts, snow cannons and buildings, which would have a significant impact on ecosystems. Infrastructures that will become obsolete in the future, as will the seasonal model of monoculture tourism in these regions. This model, in turn, is based on the labor and vital instability of residents. Stop Jocs Olympic pics defines perfectly in its motto: “Feast of 30 days, misery of 30 years.”

Coming here, we only have to rely on an army of thousands of Pyrgos to escape this nightmare and save the forests from the lust of all the Gerions of our time. We hope that the Basque people and their love for the valleys will be at our side in this fight, so that the mountain range that unites us will never burn any fire.