Barcelona never had much of a chance to welcome the headquarters of the European Medicines Agency and, after the police violence during the 1st October referendum, witnessed almost live on TV on the five continents, none. Zero. As such, it's normal that it was severely penalised at the first signs of trouble and the first eliminated before Copenhague, Milan and Amsterdam, the winning city. This is the reality of the situation and, as always happens, some like it more and others less. Let's go step by step: the Spanish government last July already considered it a "practically impossible task" to win the candidacy and offered the positions of the Catalan independence movement as an excuse. All the plagues of Egypt end up being the fault of the Catalan government if you're just carried along by the media power of the pro-union side. But the reality is very different.
Let's see what the recent successes of Spanish diplomacy have been: in September 2013, Madrid lost its third bid in a row for the Summer Olympic Games to Tokyo which was eventually chosen as the 2020 host and Istanbul, which reached the final round of voting. The Spanish capital had already lost out in the previous two competitions to choose the host city for the 2012 and 2016 Games. After three consecutive failures and a colossal economic deficit, Madrid has decided to put its candidacy on ice for a few years.
In 2015, the Economy minister, Luis de Guindos, lost out to Jeroen Dijsselbloem from the Netherlands for the presidency of the Eurogroup, the informal forum which brings together the Finance ministers of the Eurozone. It was a painful defeat for the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, who didn't have enough with the support of Angela Merkel's Germany. Some months ago there was a second attempt which didn't bear fruit, as de Guindos had even less support than first time. Spain is also absent from the Executive Board of the European Central Bank and has lost former PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) minister Magdalena Álvarez's seat as vice-president of the European Investment Bank after she resigned in 2014 following accusations being brought against her in the ERE en Andalucía scandal.
Let's turn to the European Commission. Spain has lost the role of Commissioner for Economic Affairs held by Joaquín Almunia and the role of High Representative for Foreign Policy held for years by Javier Solana. Today, the country only has the portfolio of limited political weight of Commissioner for Energy. We could continue in other realms where the influence of diplomacy is always important like the IOC, the International Monetary Fund, UNESCO, etc.
Really, with this cover sheet, could anyone be optimistic about Barcelona's candidacy? It was simply an exercise in illusions.