Between desire and good sense

It was coming. And it had been brewing for days. Mayor of Malaga, Paco de la Torre, announced last week that Malaga is giving up being a host city for the 2030 World Cup. That the city lets pass the possibility of hosting a few World Cup matches is a shame, but it's not really what's important. What's truly transcendent is that being a World Cup host was the perfect excuse to tackle a profound renovation of La Rosaleda stadium, currently obsolete and absolutely insufficient for a province of Malaga's dimensions.

This was the reason why the three institutions involved - Junta de Andalucía, Malaga city council and the provincial authority - were determined to take on this project that had doubts hanging over it from the first minute.

In fact, back in March, I wrote in SUR "Thinking of a new Rosaleda somewhere else and dedicating the current space to housing - which would also finance the new stadium - doesn't seem unreasonable, beyond having to give up being a World Cup host. We cannot be stubborn and much less be prisoners of haste or worried about what people will say."

What really happened? Well, the last straw was the impossibility of offering Malaga CF a provisional stadium with 25,000 seats. The configuration of the athletics stadium grounds - due to their instability from underground seawater - made such work impossible. And the option of a prefabricated stadium like Zaragoza's wasn't possible either because Malaga doesn't have similar land, with access and service connections.

In terms of the Rosaleda renovation project, nothing was clear and the mayor changed options several times, especially after all his negotiations with private companies proved fruitless. Had the World Cup project been carried out, Malaga wouldn't have had the football stadium it deserves.

Taking into account how things stood, turning it down is the most sensible thing that could be done however much it hurts or whatever international impact it may have. These next five years to 2030 would have been an ordeal with many possibilities of ending in disaster.

What has happened should be a lesson for everyone, in the sense that when undertaking a project of such importance you need decision and planning, without that sensation of indecision that so characterises this city in recent years.

It should make us all think about why, in this Malaga of ours, all the big projects have run aground during their development in recent years and for the most varied reasons.

You have got to wonder why it's so difficult now for big projects to move forward and do so with consensus. You can never please everyone all of the time. When facing ideas of such magnitude and so relevant to all, you need decision, leadership and determination, because it's impossible to be standing and sitting at the same time.