Last week Egoitz Bijueska, the 15-year-old boy who in March He was proclaimed skateboarding world champion in the Park category, making him the youngest individual athlete in the history of Spanish sport.
If he did not return to our country sooner it was because he was busy in the competition, but also because there is no proper facility in the entire Spanish territory where you can train. What Egoitz most wanted was to join his team, surely a desire that he sacrifices like other elite athletes, but that could be corrected if someone here gets down to work.
The Higher Sports Council has quietly expressed its desire to create facilities of this levelbut he doesn’t finish taking the step. The Generalitat, which is also interested in the development of this sport because it is directly linked to the trend of current society, agrees to provide some land in Castelldefels, on the outskirts of Barcelona, but the strength of the Government of Spain is lacking for this to be carried out. At the moment, there is only will, but no movement.
Egoitz Bijueska
In a sport where twenty-somethings already have to make efforts to follow in the footsteps of teenagers It would be convenient for the birth of a Skate Park to occur at the height of Bijueska. The history of Spain is full of pioneers who worked the miracle with hardly any alternatives, but these are past times and now – and this is an achievement in this legislature – the sports budgets are thick. Queralt Castellet, the national snowboarding star, and Lucas Eguibar were Olympic medalist and world champion in snowboarding, in conditions very reminiscent of this. It is about knowing whether the sports policy of this country is the promotion of single verses or creating a framework that leaves a mark.
The Bijueska case is, ultimately, a litmus test for Spanish sports policy. It is not about building an Olympic stadium or designing a strategic plan for twenty years. It is about taking a tangible and urgent step. The land is there. The will, they say, too. All that’s left is for someone to sign. Because when the Los Angeles Games arrive, perhaps it is time to ask ourselves if Spain deserves to boast about what it did not know how to take care of.