Manresa

Manresa is a pilgrimage city in the middle of inland industrial Catalonia. Capital of the Bages county, on the river Cardener, it holds the cave — the Cova de Sant Ignasi — in which Ignatius of Loyola lived in 1522 the spiritual experience from which the Spiritual Exercises were born, the seed of the Society of Jesus; in 2022 the city was the centre of the Jubilee Year that celebrated the 500th anniversary of that step. That dual condition — destination of faith and Catalan industrial hub — is what defines its character.

In sporting terms, Manresa is above all a basketball city. Bàsquet Manresa, a fixture of the ACB League, was crowned League champion in the 1997-98 season and had earlier won the 1996 King's Cup, beating FC Barcelona 94-92; it plays its games at the Nou Congost, opened in 1992, with a capacity of 5,000 spectators. The city is also the cradle of a top-level Olympic athlete: the water polo player Manel Estiarte, born in Manresa in 1961, Olympic gold in Atlanta 1996 after six Olympic appearances.

Manresa received from ACES Europe the title of European City of Sport 2024, with the flag handed over at the European Parliament. As a city of sport, it hosted that season the grand start of the Volta a Catalunya. The recognition places it in the rich Catalan trail of the ACES network, alongside Lleida (2008), Igualada (2019), Terrassa (2021) and Martorell (2023).