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Cash issues force postponement of Mediterranean Games

Xinhua, November 9, 2016 Adjust font size:

Cash problems have meant that the Mediterranean Games, scheduled to be held in the Spanish city of Tarragona in 2017, have had to be postponed a year until 2018.

The news was confirmed by the Mayor of Tarragona and the President of the Games Organizing Committee, Josep Felix Ballesteros on Monday.

The Games had been awarded to the city around 50 miles south of Barcelona in 2011, in the middle of the economic crisis.

Ballesteros explained he had asked the Spanish government for 15 million Euros in August (around 16.5 million US dollars) to help finish the construction of some of the installations.

However, the political stalemate with no central government in Madrid for over 10 months, meant the money has so far not arrived.

It may do so in the future after the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport published a communique on Monday insisting; "The government's commitment to the Mediterranean Games in Tarragona has been impossible to doubt."

Ballesteros insisted on Monday that the city would not have to find the extra money, but the decision to postpone the Games has been qualified as "ridiculous" by opposition groups in the Tarragona local authority, which point out they had previously warned the Town Hall of the financial black hole. Endit