The debate on the expansion of the Barcelona-El Prat Airport will once again be on the front pages in 2024 due to the upcoming constitution of a technical commission between the Generalitat and the Government, which will arrive after beating this infrastructure in November, for the first time , the number of travelers registered in 2019.
On January 18, the technical commission that will decide the future of Barcelona Airport will meet for the first time. Representatives of the Ministry of Transport and Generalitat will address the work plan and the constitution of the technical commission for expansion/modernization.
Within the framework of the 2023 Catalan budgets, ERC and the PSC agreed to create a “technical commission” to address how El Prat can “gain capacity.” The Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, and the Minister of Territory, Ester Capella, will hold their first formal meeting after Epiphany to discuss this and other issues, such as the first steps to take in the transfer of Rodalies.
This when El Prat this November has surpassed, for the first time, the passenger numbers (+ 4.3%) and operations (+ 0.9%) of the same month in 2019, before the outbreak of the pandemic.
The director of El Prat, Eva Valenzuela, recently pointed out that the aerodrome can reach “in a short period of time the maximum number of intercontinental routes it can assume,” although she stressed that this depends on the demand of the airlines.
The truth is that in 2019, 52.6 million travelers were registered, not far from the 55 million that set the maximum theoretical capacity. In addition, El Prat has closed 2023 with 50 intercontinental routes, compared to 47 in 2019, although it is still pending to recover connections with Asia due to the economic slowdown in the area, especially in China, and the conflict in Ukraine, which complicates air traffic. .
An eventual expansion should make it possible for Barcelona to become an intercontinental 'hub' (aerodrome that links short flights with other transoceanic ones), which would attract multinational companies and large conferences.
And the largest planes, those that travel the longest distances, require runways that exceed 3,000 meters in length, according to various experts.
With the current facilities, the flights operated could already be increased (from 80 per hour to 90), but since 2006 the runways have been used segregated (the one closest to the sea for takeoffs, its parallel for landings) to minimize the noise perceived by surrounding residents, mainly from Viladecans, Gavà and Castelldefels.
So to increase the capacity of El Prat, various options are open, all with counterparts:
The airport manager, Aena, 51% owned by the State and one of the main values of the Ibex 35, has proposed lengthening the runway closest to the sea by 500 meters.
A debate that gained strength in the summer of 2021, when the central government and the Generalitat reached an agreement in principle, although the fine print was left to the discretion of a future Master Plan.
Everything went awry weeks later, given the complicated political context: in Spain, Catalonia and Barcelona, coalition executives governed, with part of each of those cabinets opposed to a greater or lesser extent to the project (Unidas Podemos, ERC and the Commons, respectively).
A few days later, the Catalan Government made public "its red lines": it would not accept "any proposal that destroys the La Ricarda lagoon", an enclave that would be fully affected if Aena's proposal is approved.
Therein lay the key to the principle of agreement, several knowledgeable sources tell EFE: they were betting that the Master Plan would reduce the expansion of the runway to about 300 meters, instead of the 500 meters proposed by Aena, so that the La Ricarda will not be “destroyed”, although its surroundings will be strongly affected.
