Universal Forum of Cultures
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The Universal Forum of Cultures - (Catalan: Fòrum Universal de les Cultures, Spanish: Fórum Universal de las Culturas) was a 141-day international event that took place in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain from May 9 to September 26, 2004.
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First Forum
The 2004 Universal Forum of Cultures (henceforth "Forum") was organized by Barcelona's local council, the regional government (the Generalitat de Catalunya), the Spanish National Government and UNESCO. It was conceived by its prime mover (Pasqual Maragall i Mira, then socialist Mayor of Barcelona) as a way of promoting the city's burgeoning tourist industry in the wake of the 1992 Olympic Games. The Forum was also politically useful, given the Mayor's earlier failure to deliver on a 1996 promise to secure an international exposition for the city (a fiasco widely reported in the local press at the time). The Forum was thus partly conceived as a way of restoring Maragall's credibility with electors and increasing his chances of successfully challenging Jordi Pujol (Convergència i Unió party), then the incumbent President of Catalonia, in future elections.
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The official aims of the 2004 Universal Forum of Cultures included support for peace, sustainable development, human rights and respect for diversity.
The Forum Barcelona 2004 had more than 40 international conventions (in which Juan Antonio Samaranch, Mikhail Gorbachev, José Saramago, Felipe González, Rigoberta Menchú, Angelina Jolie, Robert McNamara, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Lionel Jospin, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Romano Prodi and Salman Rushdie, participated, among others), performances, markets, games, 423 concerts, 57 street performances, 44 theatre, dance and cabaret companies, 20 circus acts and over 20 exhibitions.
The events were held at the eastern end of Avinguda Diagonal, the main street that runs across the city. The area - which lies by the sea - was developed to house the event. It covered 30 hectares between Barcelona Olympic port and Sant Adrià de Besòs and culminated the urban regeneration programme started for the Barcelona Olympic Games of 1992. The new site comprises a convention center, central plaza, parks, auditoriums, a new port and a Forum Building (Herzog & de Meuron).
Controversy
The broad business concept shaping the Forum was largely drawn up by ESADE, a business school founded by the Jesuits (Society of Jesus). The link between the Forum's commercial sponsors and the business school can readily be appreciated by comparing the companies listed on ESADE's Board of Trustees and those featured on the Forum's web site. The strong business orientation apparent in the organization of the event gave rise to considerable local controversy in both the run-up to the Forum and during the event itself. Several NGOs argued that they were frozen out of the decision-making process as the original Forum concept was radically altered to cater to corporate interests. The issue is of more than purely historical relevance - Monterrey (Mexico) has chosen a very different approach to its hosting of the 2007 Forum in the light of criticisms levelled at Barcelona's organization of the 2004 Forum. The controversy may also damage the re-election prospects of Barcelona's incumbent Mayor - Joan Clos i Matheu - a point that has been repeatedly made by political commentators in local and national newspapers across the political spectrum.
The campaign against the Forum took many forms. One of the biggest demonstrations consisted of a seaborne invasion by anti-Forum protesters landing in makeshift rafts. This dealt a serious blow to the event's carefully groomed media image, particularly when Jordi Oliveras, the Forum's Director-General was kicked by a demonstrator and Miquel Miró, the Director of Operations, was hit over the head by one of the Forum's security guards. The "invasion" was widely reported in the press, despite the fact that major newspapers, radio and television stations had been co-opted into the Forum under a special media consortium agreement.
The choice of some speakers at the Forum's "dialogues" also sparked protest. An article in one of Catalonia's mass circulation dailies argued that Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (former President of Bolivia and a keynote speaker at a Forum conference on development problems in South America) was a less than ideal choice. Lozada had a major stake in Bolivia's highly polluting Potosi mine and the previous year had taken a flight to Miami while the Bolivian military machine-gunned striking miners at home.
A further blow came when the Dalai Lama cancelled his visit to the Forum. The reason (widely reported in the Catalan and Spanish press at the time) was the Forum organizers' decision to expel the Tibetan stand from the site of the event. The move came after Chinese Government protests at the stand's coverage of the genocide and cultural destruction in Tibet that followed the Red Army's invasion in 1950. The organizers bowed to Chinese pressure given that the Forum's star exhibit - The Terracotta Army - had been lent by the Beijing authorities.
The Forum also attracted the ire of demonstrators when the organizers refused to condemn the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The fact that several of the Forum's sponsors had significant stakes in the arms industry further excacerbated protests.
Critics pointed to the $2.3 billion price tag and commercial sponsorship by multinationals [ENDESA, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Telefónica, and Indra] with dubious reputations in the Third World. Several groups also criticised the massive property and coastline destruction involved in building the Forum site. In addition, many NGOs, including Greenpeace and Amnesty International, withdrew from the Forum project in protest. This may explain why the Forum fell so far short of its projected attendance figures for the 141-day event. The Forum expected 5 million visitors but the official final attendance figure was around 3.5 million. Independent estimates of attendance were significantly lower.
Future Forums
The 2007 Universal Forum of Cultures will be held in Monterrey, Mexico.
The third edition will be held in 2011 and the candidate cities are Amsterdam (The Netherlands), Fukuoka (Japan), Alexandria (Egypt), Suwon and Gwangju (South Korea), Santiago de Chile (Chile), Budapest (Hungary) and Durban (South Africa).
External Link
- Official Web Site of Universal Forum of Cultures
- UNESCO Web Site about Forum Barcelona 2004
- Anti-Forum web page (in Spanish)