–abertis sponsors the route of the Olympic flame, which will visit eleven Catalan cities

-Members of acesa’s athletics team accompany the torchbearers, who are sportspeople with mental disabilities

For the second time consecutively, abertis is sponsoring the route of the 2006 Special Olympic Games torch, which arrived in Barcelona today. In its eighth edition, the Special Olympic Games will be held in Lloret de Mar from October 11^th to 15^th and will bring together 1,819 sportspeople from 17 countries and 1,200 volunteers. The objective of the event is to promote personal development and the integration of mentally disabled people through sport, ideas which match abertis’ priority for the quality of life and well being of people.

From October 4^th to 10^th, the Special Olympics torch will pass through Catalan cities that include those that have previously been the home to these games: L’Escala, Figueres, Lleida, Igualada, Vilanova i la Geltrú, Barcelona, Reus, Badalona and Blanes, until reaching Lloret de Mar, which will host this eighth edition.

Along the route, three members of the acesa athletics team, Xavier Comas, Álex Calamardo and José Antonio Ríos, have taken turns to accompany sportspeople with mental disabilities. In fact, the abertis corporation has participated in this project since the torch was lit with the Olympic flame in Lausanne in Switzerland on 22^nd September, when Ricard Maxenchs, director of Institutional Relations and Quality of abertis and member of the Honorary Committee of the Lloret 2006 Special Olympic Games, was present.

On the arrival of the Olympic torch in Barcelona, Ricard Maxenchs stated that “this sponsorship brings us a great deal of happiness because, apart from being part of our Corporation’s Social Responsibility philosophy, it enables us to collaborate with these sportspeople so that they can enjoy some days full of excitement. We are sure that it will be a success, as it was in its last edition in Badalona”.

abertis is also collaborating in the Special Olympics by offering the photographic exhibition Camins d’emocions (Paths of Emotions), that the Corporation has been promoting since the last edition of the Games, and which expresses the feelings and emotions experienced by the sportspeople who participated in Badalona. The exhibition can be visited now and until the end of the Games in Lloret de Mar’s Olympic Village.

The exhibition, Camins d’emocions (Paths of Emotions) was opened for the first time in the vestibule of a well-known Barcelona shopping centre after the 7^th Special Olympic Games. Some 60,000 people visited the shopping centre while the exhibition was installed there. Since then, the show has travelled to several Catalan cities. In fact, the project promoted by abertis in the last edition of the Games was awarded the prize for the Social Initiative of Family Businesses and Institutions Awards, granted by the Group of Catalan Associations for the Family.