Abstract

The governance of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics was a balancing act between the rigid Olympic tradition overseen by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and local needs. Although the Olympic Games are a pre-established event governed by IOC rules, Barcelona conceived them as a tool for creating a medium- to long-term urban legacy. Furthermore, the 1992 Organising Committee (COOB’92) was constituted according to the importance and interests of each tier of government, particularly the City Council’s. This article analyses the characteristics of the governance of the Barcelona Olympics by identifying the distribution of governing bodies among the different institutional stakeholders. While it is well known that these Games were designed to accomplish the far-reaching modernisation of the city, this research focuses on clarifying the role of the stakeholders that managed the Olympic project.