The Universal Forum of Cultures - (Catalan: Fòrum de les Cultures) was a 141-day international event that took place in Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain from May 9 to September 26, 2004.
The 2004 Universal Forum of Cultures (henceforth "Forum") was organized by Barcelona's local council, the regional government (the Generalitat de Catalunya), the Spanish National Government and UNESCO. It was conceived by its prime mover (Pascual Maragall, then socialist Mayor of Barcelona) as a way of promoting the city's burgeoning tourist industry in the wake of the 1992 Olympic Games. The Forum was also politically useful, given the Mayor's earlier failure to deliver on a 1994 promise to secure an international exposition for the city (a fiasco widely reported in the local press at the time). The Forum was thus partly conceived as a way of restoring Maragall's credibility with electors and increasing his chances of successfully challenging Jordi Pujol (Convergència i Unió party), then the incumbent President of Catalonia, in future elections.
The broad business concept shaping the Forum was largely drawn up by ESADE, a business school founded by the Jesuits (Society of Jesus). The link between the Forum's commercial sponsors and the business school can readily be appreciated by comparing the companies listed on ESADE's Board of Trustees and those featured on the Forum's web site. The strong business orientation apparent in the organization of the event gave rise to considerable local controversy in both the run-up to the Forum and during the event itself. Several NGOs argued that they were frozen out of the decision-making process as the original Forum concept was radically altered to cater to corporate interests. The issue is of more than purely historical relevance - Monterrey (Mexico) has chosen a very different approach to its hosting of the 2007 Forum in the light of criticisms levelled at Barcelona's organization of the 2004 Forum.
The official aims of the 2004 Universal Forum of Cultures included support for peace, sustainable development, human rights and respect for diversity.
The event was controversial, with critics pointing to the $2.3 billion price tag and commercial sponsorship by multinationals [ENDESA, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Telefónica, and Indra] with dubious reputations in the Third World. Several groups also criticised the massive property and coastline destruction involved in building the Forum site. In addition, many NGOs, including Greenpeace and Amnesty International, withdrew from the Forum project in protest. This may explain why the Forum fell so far short of its projected attendance figures for the 141-day event. The forecasts were progressively scaled back from 25 million at the planning stage, to 7 million and then 5 million during the event. The official final attendance figure was around 3.5 million, although even this figure is hotly disputed.
The 2007 Universal Forum of Cultures will be held in Monterrey, Mexico.
