Its emblem defines her as immortal, but neither the passing of time nor its 2000 years of history prevent Zaragoza to feel as a new born baby. The city finally sees itself as a protagonist thanks to what has seemed to be a big collective catharsis: the organization of an international exposition dedicated to water and sustainable development.
Anonymous, maybe only known for its Virgen del Pilar and the sometimes excessive accent of its citizens, this Spanish provincial capital dreams of eliminating once for good the stigma of being a passageway. The road that links Madrid and Barcelona borders Zaragoza at half way. It borders it, but never crosses it.
For years, this place of North-East Spain, the fifth most populated of the country, with more than 600.000 inhabitants, has grown in the shadow of the Olympic vigor of Barcelona or the impressive growth of Bilbao and its all-powerful Museo Guggenheim. The EXPO Zaragoza, which will start on June 13th, should give Zaragoza a place on the map which it so far hasn’t had.
Numbers and investments
The effort is made and the numbers are convincing. The total public investment in the city to host the event has exceeded 2.900 millions of euros, more than 4.500 millions of dollars. Money from private companies has also arrived in abundance. More than 2.000 millions of euros in addition among sponsorship and collaborations. "We are going to reach in 3 years what normally would have cost us 20", says the Mayor of Zaragoza, Juan Alberto Belloch, Proudly.
Moreover, since Zaragoza has officially announced its candidature in 2000 until it won the nomination in 2004, the tap of the economic financing has also flown generously.
The Spanish embassies all around the world and the powerful institute for tourism of the government, Turespaña, threw themselves in the promotional campaign of the event. Although it’s difficult to assess the overall cost, it is estimated that this expenditure could exceed 35 millions of euros.
Waste or not, hardly any voice is raised against an Expo that is going to leave a truly storm of millions. For many, Zaragoza, a city whose votes do not decide over elections in Spain, could have never dreamed about a similar investment if it wasn’t for an Expo.
For a minority however, like the Plataforma ZH2ONO, these events contribute only to the enrichment of builders and speculators and to ruin the public treasury.
"My opinion is that it’s worthwhile", explains Roque Gistau, president of the company Expo Zaragoza 2008 entrusted with managing the event.
Suddenly, the international support is remarkable. 106 countries will have a pavilion in the event. Thousands of concerts and shows will share the space with the scientific forum, which objective will be to promote a new culture that will solve the problem of the world water supply.
As irony of fate, this Water Expo is celebrated in a place that gets drier everyday, living under the yoke of an unstoppable desertification especially in the southern part of the country.
Even more ironic is that a generous month of May, with reference to rainfalls, has provoked a flood of the Ebro River which crosses Zaragoza, suspending some of the actions foreseen for the inaugural ceremony of the Expo.
One of the big novelties is that Zaragoza inaugurates a new model of exhibitions. Internet and globalization have eclipsed the origin of traditional Universal Expositions, conceived in order to allow the world to know the progress of hardly know countries. The next universal EXPO will be in China in 2010.
History and facts
However, the International Bureau of Expositions (BIE, for its acronym in French), the organism that regulates these kind of events, decided to create some years ago the so-called International Expositions, that have their own rules: they have to focus on one theme, can last only three months, not six as the universal ones, and the physical space to host the exposition has a limit. Zaragoza is the first of these new events.
Everything is practically ready. Zaragoza will show to the world an Expo that, for instance, counts on architectonic treasures as the bridge designed by the Iraqis architect Zaha Hadid, Pritzker prize for architecture in 2004.
In a similar situation is Madrid, which aims to become the seat of the Olympic Games 2016. Mercedes Cohen is the managing director for the candidature and she believes that this kind of events strengthen the image of Spain abroad. "An inaugural ceremony of the Olympiads has an audience of 4.700 millions of people. This is priceless, in addition to the legacy of the ", Ms. Cohen explains.
For Emilio Casinello, a diplomat that was commissioner of the Universal Exposition of Seville in 1992, appointments as the Expo are fundamental. "Such of appointment acts as spokesperson of a country’s modernization, in this case Spain ", he concludes.
The eastern part of England also is partly reclaimed from the sea, centuries ago. The marshlands now are a valuable agricultural area. Of course, maintenance is needed to keep the water where it belongs and at the same time making it work. This video explains the 'how' of it by the Water Management Alliance, showing pumps, dedicated machines and ways of working with water.
Anonymous, maybe only known for its Virgen del Pilar and the sometimes excessive accent of its citizens, this Spanish provincial capital dreams of eliminating once for good the stigma of being a passageway. The road that links Madrid and Barcelona borders Zaragoza at half way. It borders it, but never crosses it.
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