David Bondia, a Catalan ombudsman from Barcelona, has urged the council of the city of Barcelona to cancel the upcoming ICE gambling and iGaming fair scheduled to be hosted in the city for the upcoming five years.
According to Bondia, hosting such events is contradictory to the existing policies of Barcelona against gambling harm and gambling addiction, highlighting that the Council “possesses legal means” to ban any gambling-affiliate events.
Moreover, Bondia encourages discussions with the fair’s hosting body, Fira de Barcelona, urging them to either completely cancel the event, or negotiate an early termination with the event organizers from ICE.
If cancelling the event is not possible, however, Bondia demands the city of Barcelona refrain from further promoting the event and stand by its commitment to responsible gambling and preventing gambling addiction.
Bondia also highlights the “blatant contradiction” between the city of Barcelona’s decision to host ICE and its strategies to reduce gambling-related harm, pointing out the recent health policies brought up by the Council that include reducing gambling establishments, promoting prevention of gambling addiction, and restricting gambling advertising.
Furthermore, the report by the ombudsman reveals that the recent Gambling Addiction Prevention Plan 2019-2023 actively discourages any promotion of gambling within the city of Barcelona.
This includes restricting gambling advertisements across various public spaces, such as transportation networks, and consequently mandating subsidies for the city to adopt strict measures to battle gambling addiction.
Additionally, as per the report of Bondia, ICE also clashes with the Barcelona Public Healthy Agency’s Action Plan (ASPB) on Drugs and Addictions (2019-2024), which has the sole purpose of educating the public on the dangers of gambling addiction, which includes 50 designated strategies specifically designed to diminish problem gambling and bring to light its impact on public health.
And it is not just David Bondia. The ICE event also received disapproval from Manel Balcells, the Health Minister of Catalonia, as well as the Generalitet de Catalunya led by the ERC, all of whom linked ICE to the recent political union among Comuns, PP, and PSC.
Balcells also criticized the support of the Council for a new social model in which, according to the Minister, “the most vulnerable always lose, and banks always win,” thus further underlining the ongoing political divide and tensions regarding the upcoming edition of ICE, being the opposition of this story are actively attempting to regulate gambling events and profit from the taxes.
