Work on La Peineta, Madrid's Olympic Stadium, at a standstill

"If work on the new stadium has not begun by March, call me a liar." That was the challenge thrown by Miguel Ángel Gil Marín, Atlético Madrid's delegate to the Board, in February.

He meant this March. Though the club handed the media some photos of La Peineta full of trucks and diggers at the end of that month, in reality, construction had not begun. Atlético did not even have the proper building licenses yet.

They still haven't. The only permission the club has received is one to fence the plot of land where the stadium is located and clear the vegetation.

"We thought that the process to get all the licenses would not take that long," says Emilio Gutiérrez, head of Atlético's marketing division and Gil Marín's right-hand man.

The licensing process will take that long, and then some. The consistory now calculates that it will not be able to hand the building permits over to Atlético before December. The stadium's modernization calls for a special plan, which City Hall was hoping to pass in the September plenary, but it will not have enough time.

Just when it was about to approve all the procedures, the municipal authorities realized that the 3,000-car parking lot for the project is so big that it requires a special plan in itself. This setback delays the process until at least November or December.

La Peineta is a 21,000-seat stadium that was inaugurated in style in 1994, but which has since become obsolete. Since Atlético and the consistory signed an agreement in 2008 to move the club to the San Blas stadium, the beginning of renovations has been announced many times, but it has never actually been started. Now that Madrid is opting for the Summer Olympics again, it is an urgent matter once more. The reason is clear: La Peineta is to be Madrid's Olympic stadium. Mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón has promised a low-cost Olympic bid with no infrastructure investment until Madrid finds out in September 2013 if it will host the 2020 Olympics or not, arguing that the candidacy is still possible because 80 percent of construction is already complete.

But work on the Olympic stadium is at a standstill. City Hall obviously has the greatest interest in seeing the project get started, even if only for the sake of having some cranes to show the International Olympic Committee (IOC). In this sense, the agreement with Atlético is also beneficial as the IOC values the subsequent reutilization of facilities used during the games.

Referred to as Operación Calderón, the agreement between the club, Mahou brewery and the municipal government will see Atlético change stadiums without any sort of financial gain, though it will get 15,000 additional seats and more modern facilities.

On the other hand, plots along the river Manzanares that currently belong to Atlético and the brewery will be reclassified to build 2,000 houses, preserve 160,000 square meters of green zones in Madrid Río and cut and cover the M-30 motorway. According to the agreement, Atlético will transform La Peineta into an Olympic stadium at no cost to the Ruiz-Gallardón government.