BARCELONA -- Runners, swimmers and jumpers may be flocking to Athens this summer, but Barcelona is hosting a different kind of Olympics -- a five-month cultural and intellectual forum that is bent on solving the world's problems.
Organizers say they expect more than five million visitors to converge on this Mediterranean and former Olympic city for the 2004 Forum of Cultures -- part festival, part meeting-of-minds on broad themes such as peace, cultural diversity and sustainable development.
For Barcelona, it's a chance to recover the international limelight it basked in back in 1992 when it hosted the Olympics -- not to mention rake in tourist dollars and give itself a long-overdue face-lift.
For visitors, it means dozens of conferences and cultural exhibits, 450 concerts by performers such as Bob Dylan and Sting, plays, dance shows and speeches by guests such as former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio (Lula) da Silva.
It's like a "cultural Olympics," said forum spokesman Oleguer Sarsenadas. "We hope the forum will be an international event on par with the Olympics or the World Expo, only we're bringing together individuals, not countries.
"Everything works toward the forum's goal of finding new models of dealing with the world's problems."
Yet there is a definite pragmatic side to it all, despite the feel-good veneer.
"Barcelona needs an excuse to get necessary urban work finished," Sarsenadas said. "In the past 100 years, Barcelona has hosted two world expos and an Olympic Games; now, we've invented the forum. In part, all of these projects have been excuses for urban renewal."
About $460-million (all amounts in U.S. dollars) of public and private money are funding the forum events, while a whopping $2.6-billion has been spent on the festival's infrastructure, which includes a total transformation of the city's once-marginalized and crime-ridden northern shore.
The 50-hectare site features a large new port, a public plaza -- that organizers say is second only to Beijing's Tiananmen Square in size -- and southern Europe's largest conference centre.
There are also a new beach, a park and a striking triangular building designed by Swiss architects Herzog and De Meuron that supporters hope will become what they call Barcelona's Guggenheim.
The city promises that the forum site will be profitable after the festival is over as a venue for large trade conferences.
But the event is not without critics.
An anti-globalization group called the Assembly of Resistance to the Forum argues that widely embraced topics such as peace and diversity are just excuses for the city to earn more money with tourism.
And Barcelona's Federation of Neighbourhood Associations says the forum has taken priority over more important urban issues such as health care and housing.
"Housing is a tremendous problem in Barcelona, and thousands of families live without water or electricity. With just 10 per cent of what they've invested in the forum, they could have solved housing problems for 23,000 low-income families," said Eva Fernandez, the federation president.
Organizers are confident in the success of the forum, which has been in the works since 1997 and runs through Sept. 26.
"The forum has created a lot of expectations," said director of communications Xavier Marcet. "It's absolutely new and absolutely innovative, but everything points to the fact that it will be a great success."
For a schedule of events, details on how to purchase tickets through individual venues and other information, visit barcelona2004.org.
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