It is decided! The Agora in Barcelona in spring 1999 received most votes in the “Favourite Agora” poll. In the very first voting on the Golden Odie site the Barcelona Agora received 17 out of the 201 votes that were cast – that’s 8,5 percent of all votes. You might say this is not too much, but if you consider that so far 50 Agoras have taken place, this is quite something. Runner-ups were the 2007 Agora in Valletta with 14 votes and the autumn Agora in Ankara in 1997 with 13 votes. Only one more Agora managed to receive a two-digit support: the biggest Agora ever, the Agora Maastricht in April 1998, which hosted 1150 people. These four Agoras received 27 percent of all votes.
Why Barcelona? The main reason is obvious that this Agora is one of the few turning points in AEGEE. In Barcelona and the two previous Agoras the CDs received a negative vote for its moral report. The CD that was in power until Barcelona had deleted the bookkeeping programme by mistake, losing a lot of financial data. The European Commission announced that it was not satisfied with the previous report about the use of the general subvention, therefore not granting AEGEE-Europe the badly needed financial support… things were really looking bad. In this situation, all of a sudden, a group of people declared they would do better. Candidates like Fani Zarifopoulou, Aliki Louvrou and Marcus Khoury spontaneously declared their willingness to canddate for the CD. Suddenly there was hope, a breeze of fresh air, a general attitude of European “Yes, we can” at the Agora.
Plus, there was also the biggest paella ever at an Agora, great cultural sights like the famous Catalan human towers, amazing hospitality by the organisers and fantastic parties….
The Golden Oldie asked people, who were present at the Agora Barcelona, how they remember this event. You’ll find their memories soon in another article.
