Open Camp Barcelona

Final sprint to the first sport theme park

Open Camp Barcelona

Quietly and without cranes and scaffolding, the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium is undergoing a major transformation within. As of June 16 will be the main stage of Open Camp, the first theme park of sport in the world, to be installed in the Olympic Ring of Montjuïc and fill with life a space far longer reach tourists, but do not have much what to do.

From a set of experiences, visitors will feel Messi, Gasol or Bolt for one minute. There will be 26 different to practice sports. “Do not come to sweat, most of the attractions will be possible to enjoy with tie” makes clear the ideologue of Open Camp, Paco Medina, which uses the concept Sportainment. That is, the combination of sport and entertainment. It sounds simple, but no one has implemented something anywhere. He has spent five years gestating project that now sees the light.

The site chosen is an attraction by itself. Barcelona has the well-preserved Olympic ring, something that does not happen in many other cities that have hosted Olympic Games. Project leaders have traveled around the world visiting scenarios before deciding on the Catalan capital and have found totally abandoned places. In Montjuïc, despite good condition, occupancy rates are minimal. For this year, the Olympic Stadium is on schedule three dates: Coldplay two concerts in May and a show car monster jam on June 4. The latter case involves a total transformation of the track because it is filled with sand to make a circuit, which do not like Paco Medina because “unnecessarily wearing installation with a use that has nothing to do with what was thought.”

Open Camp defends the original conception of space and it invests 10 million euros in the first 18 months. Much of the work is focusing on washing the face to the facility opened 26 years ago. Stadium internally with public address systems, cabling and new technologies lacking in time be renewed. And it will more attractive: there will be screens everywhere. Besides adaptation work, and is carrying out the installation of some attractions. One of the most spectacular is Open 360, a system used in the training of some professional soccer teams like Benfica and will be the first time made available to the general public. The machine loose balls and the player must shoot at the goal posts and points that appear virtually around. The equipment has cost a million and a half euros.

But although the attractions tend to be remembered as theme parks, from the impeller private group project affecting put the focus on the overall experience over the Dragon Khan shift. Paco Medina points as an example to Futuroscope instead of Port Aventura. “The important thing is the story, not the attractions,” he insists. All the sports activities occupy about 20% of the space, the same percentage that will have experiences such as medical professionals by High Performance Centre (CAR) of Sant Cugat or a sports massage checkup. Another important part will occupy the shows, the most prominent of them at closing time, when it will be held every day a closing ceremony with all the classic elements of these acts. All this is completed by two basic aspects which will provide a significant amount of revenue the park: on the one hand, restaurants; on the other, shops sports brands, technological accessories and the possibility of renting favorite team’s equipment visitor to exit on the photos totally into the role of their idols.

The theme park will run like clockwork: a moment of glory and one minute replacement. So it will be in all the attractions. And you will not know some? “You can repeat as many times as you want,” says the CEO, Paco Medina. In addition, the tails of the theme parks to enjoy the attractions in Open Camp will be more bearable because they form part of the appeal itself. While the shift is expected, it will act as the bystander witnessing the competition and encourages athletes, with the difference that a few minutes later, he will star. With tie or the shirt of Messi, which take all Olympians for a day it will be a digital wristband that allows access to different experiences and record the results in a mobile application. The images will be displayed on the screen of the stadium, “the experience will be completely individualized, which does not happen in any other theme park,” notes Medina. One of the strengths of the project is that it is addressed to a universal audience, such as sports.

In addition to the Olympic Stadium, there will be activities in the hockey rink, baseball field and Calatrava Tower. Meanwhile, the Olympic Museum will be renewed. Inside there will be another of the most striking attractions: a clue fully interactive basketball. The company will pay 30 million euros for the rent for a period of five years of the facility, deficit so far for the council. Instead, they left out of the first stage of the Palau Sant Jordi and pools and facilities of the National Institute of Physical Education of Catalonia (INEFC). In the future, they hope to incorporate.

The movement from one place to another enclosure will be totally free. No closed perimeter, and public spaces remain so. “Moreover, we are going to clean up and open up previously inaccessible places,” argues Paco Medina. Open Camp will be open 230 days a year. Monday through Sunday during the summer months, to attract tourists, and on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays during the rest of the year, when more local public expects. The ticket price is 28 euros. There will be discounts for families and may be reduced in some cases to 18 euros. The goal is to reach 1.4 million visitors in its first year. Although initially most are expected to be around Barcelona, ​​born with international vocation and continuity. “Open Camp is not an ephemeral world, it will generate a permanent economic impact on the city,” concluded Medina. In the theme park will work 280 people.

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The resurrection of Corto Maltese

Comes ‘Under the midnight sun’, the new album adventurer created by Hugo Pratt, by Juan Diaz Canales and Ruben Pellejero

Corto Maltese

Already cartoon teacher Hugo Pratt (Rimini, Italy, 1927 – Grandvaux, Switzerland, 1995) said shortly before his death: “I do not fear the idea that one day someone can resume Corto Maltese”.

Today insurance will smile and bless the resurrection of his legendary creation and alter ego adventurous two solid undertaken by Spanish authors Juan Diaz Canales (Madrid, 1972) and Ruben Pellejero (Badalona, ​​1952). “Draw it was a risk and at a time a dream. The most difficult challenge -asume the Catalan artist is that you are in the hands of a myth. ” And the myth is back in all its glory. The new album featuring Corto Maltese, under the midnight sun, will simultaneously october 1st at bookstores in Italian, French, Dutch and, with the help of Norma, in Castilian and Catalan, which also published a version in black and white.

Diaz Canales, writer of the multi Blacksad series, which has been given among others the National Comic and several Eisner, has created a new story that takes place months after The Ballad of the Salt Sea, Short’s first adventure published by Pratt in 1976 , though the character came appearing in magazines since 1967. It is 1915 and the First World War while bleeding Europe, the action moves to the frozen wastes of the far north, between Alaska and Canada. “The gold rush is history and all that environment is part of the mythology of Pratt. As a writer, he had a clear influence of all adventure stories of Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London, “explains Diaz Canales, who was commissioned to continue the series of Patricia Zanotti, director of the company Pratt manages rights and publisher of Blacksad time in Italy.

Jack London, celebrated author of White Fang, had been one of the historical figures used by the Italian artist and Under the midnight sun returns for Short ask your friend a favor that will take you to the Arctic: wants to take a letter to a former childhood sweetheart. It is not the only friend who return: do not miss the sarcastic Rasputin, Raspa, Russian army deserter gotten adventurer. “It has such a strong mythology … It’s like a Sherlock Holmes story not to put Watson. Limp, “he adds.

THE EQUILIBRIUM

“The most difficult challenge was to keep the necessary balance between respect for the work of Pratt and our role as the screenwriter -opina authors. We continue the series was charged because we are creators, not copyists. The secret was to find indispensable aspects, we understand that they are perfectly recognizable to the reader and they just open the album you get inside Corto Maltese, as the structure of four strips per page, which may sound silly but it is not. We could not get full-page vignettes or vertical, more modern structures, because people would not see Pratt. ” There therefore continues, “red lights that you can not cross but, as authors, provide own thing.” For instance? “Scenes that you know he would not have made but that work like Cartoon Short because we maintained its spirit, for example, dialogue, key to find that his so characteristic irony.”

A spirit and an atmosphere of Pratt Diaz Canales to blame for having devoted to comics after discovering a teenager in old magazines Totem his brother. “It was a shock. I thought, but you can do this with the comic? I saw that with just paper and pen, in a popular and reviled medium, could tell stories with the poetry, the power of evocation, those ideas … and silence? are so important, it’s sublime “get excited.

AFTER DIETER LUMPEN

Graphically, the character Pellejero overboard. The cartoonist’s silence Malka admits the undoubted influence of Short, who read already in the beginning in the 70s, on their own adventure, Dieter Lumpen (with script of Jorge Zentner). “It’s a benchmark. Over the years Pratt was changing the image of Short and tried to place me in a mixture without a specific face. I like the simplicity in line with the middle stage, when it is better defined. The idea was to capture the essence of the character and as author, give a value in itself, seeking a balance between his way of drawing and mine ‘says while sliding the pen on the paper with astonishing naturalness drawing a sketch of Shorted. I care much stained, to function equally well in color as in black and white version. ”

Under the indigenous population in the Great North, Inuit midnight sun appears, in tribute to the concern Pratt marginalized minorities, a legacy of his childhood. “His father was a military man and child moved to Ethiopia, where he was banished. That had to mark him as his generation, was a child of the war explains Diaz Canales. Pratt reflect very poorly resolved the problem of decolonization, the decomposition of imperialism that somehow ended up in the First World War. Her fondness for putting in their stories disadvantaged groups associated with backwardness, old and superstitious, but he gave the value and claimed “. Therefore on the album, he adds, there is a scientist whose savagery is opposed to a liberal education Inuit.

Corto Maltese

They are also faithful to the romantic adventurer “free and noble soul,” as he termed Pratt, strategically placed in the frame to historical figures, beyond the recurring London. One old love of the writer, is Waka Yamada, a Japanese former prostitute who fought for the rights of women, which track Diaz Canales found in an American book of his own library on prostitution and trafficking in women in the Far North . “You’ll documentándote and finding little gems or gold nuggets in real figures that make you think why invent if reality sometimes stranger than fiction in spades. In the case of black explorer Matthew Henson [who reached the North Pole in 1909 while Robert Peary but he was never honored by it because of the color of his skin] Gold Digger or Joe Boyle, Klondike A entrepreneur who created the first Alaska hockey team and was a spy and lover of Queen of Romania. ” But, he points out, “is not to make Wikipedia entries but what Pratt did so well, it was to keep the balance that resulted evocative.”

“I AM NOT A HERO ‘

Short insist both that which in The Ethiopian said, “I’m not a hero” – is a “complex character at all levels.” “It extends from 1967 until almost the death of Pratt, when did Mu and has a brutal evolution that began as heir to the characters of classic adventures Americans and travel literature and gradually Pratt was introducing esoteric elements, ideological aspects. .. There is no fixed Short She points Diaz Canales picture. To me it seduces me his ideological adventurer “aspect.

“There is a generation that does not know Short and the goal is also to reach it”, says Pellejero. “As a reader you want to experience new stories with him. Must keep living, “adds his colleague. It will. Their minds are already working on a new album that would come by 2017, of not advancing detail. “We look for gaps in its history. There are many areas we do not know where he was or anything about him. This allows us to fill them. ” In the final pages, a nod to fans: Pandora Groovesnore remember?

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