MADRID-The de­ci­sion by Las Ve­gas Sands to choose Madrid for a big "Eu­roVe­gas" casi­no project was wel­comed by city of­fi­cials yes­ter­day, but po­ten­tial ob­sta­cles in­clude the com­pa­ny's de­ci­sion to fund on­ly 35 per cent of the re­sort and to de­mand changes in lo­cal laws. Ana Is­abel Mari­no, Madrid's coun­selor for plan­ning and en­vi­ron­ment, said the re­gion­al gov­ern­ment re­ceived the news "with con­tained sat­is­fac­tion, giv­en that this is the first step."

Las Ve­gas Sands chair­man and CEO Shel­don Adel­son an­nounced the de­ci­sion to choose Madrid over Barcelona for the mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar gam­bling re­sort project on Fri­day night. With Spain in re­ces­sion and con­sid­er­ing a bailout, rais­ing 65 per cent of the cost could be dif­fi­cult. And there is no guar­an­tee of­fi­cials would agree to change Span­ish laws to let gam­blers smoke in­side the casi­nos and the new build­ings to soar above the sky­line.

An­a­lyst Ra­mon Zarate said, "I see cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion by banks as be­ing very com­pli­cat­ed." Zarate of the EMASI think-tank said banks were cur­rent­ly de-lever­ag­ing con­struc­tion projects, so Adel­son would need to "pool for­eign ven­ture cap­i­tal funds, but it's com­pli­cat­ed."

Adel­son's plans had left Madrid and Barcelona-Spain's two largest cities-vy­ing against each oth­er for the casi­no re­sort. One of­fi­cial even warned that re­gion­al squab­bling some 20 years ago had led to Eu­roDis­ney be­ing lo­cat­ed in France, not Spain. But Barcelona was not to be un­done by Ve­gas.

On Fri­day, the cap­i­tal of the debt-rid­den re­gion of Cat­alo­nia un­veiled its own plans for a 4.8-bil­lion eu­ro ($6 bil­lion) "Barcelona World" re­sort sit­u­at­ed be­side the ex­ist­ing Port Aven­tu­ra theme park near the Mediter­ranean Sea. Barcelona's plan would in­clude a casi­no, six large tourist com­plex­es with 20,000 ho­tel rooms, shop­ping cen­ters, a the­atre and of­fices, all on land with no plan­ning mod­i­fi­ca­tions re­quired. But fi­nanc­ing for the re­sort has not been signed yet.

Re­gion­al sus­tain­abil­i­ty coun­selor Lluis Re­coder said that project has an ad­van­tage over Madrid's in that it would be built on land that al­ready has street light­ing and roads, and be lo­cat­ed in one of Spain's ma­jor tourist re­gions. Adel­son's an­nounce­ment was not wel­comed by Spain's op­po­si­tion politi­cians who said gam­bling at­tracts crime and that jobs such as ho­tel at­ten­dants, wait­ers and black­jack deal­ers are low pay­ing and a thread­bare op­tion for Spain's many young un­em­ployed cit­i­zens.

AP