In this fourth installment of stories from the history of Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport, Aena's second facility in Spain by passengers and air cargo, we are going to talk precisely about the latter: the goods that arrive and depart from Barcelona by plane from runways that for more than a hundred years already had that vocation, the transport of objects by air.
The figure is remarkable: 156,000 tons. It is even more so if we consider that all those kilos of goods have been transported by plane to and from Barcelona Airport. The data comes from Aena's statistics department, summing all months of the 2023 fiscal year.
This cargo makes Barcelona the 24th airport in Europe in this category, led indisputably by Paris-Charles de Gaulle. In Spain, El Prat is the second cargo airport in the State, after Madrid.
After Barcelona come two airports primarily dedicated to cargo: Zaragoza and Vitoria. These initial data are to provide context to this story: that of a Barcelona-El Prat Airport that, since the takeoff of its first commercial flights, already took into account the potential of cargo transported by aircraft.
Airmail
We said that currently Roissy Airport or Paris-Charles de Gaulle leads the air cargo market in Europe, and it is in France where this Barcelona story begins. Pierre-Georges Latécoère was the first air passenger to arrive in our city. He did so with his pilot, René Cornemont, on Christmas Day 1918. From 1910 until then, all planes that had taken off from Barcelona arrived disassembled by truck or train to the airfield, because in the second decade of the last century aviation was an adventure, an exhibition, and in some cases another element of war.
Monsieur Latécoère did not arrive in Barcelona on a pleasure trip but with a very clear plan: to present his France-Morocco airmail project to society, with letters and packages arriving from all over his country, especially from the capital, to Toulouse by train and, from the capital of Occitania, that mail would fly to North Africa. The limitations of the planes of that time made it impossible to fly long distances, and for this reason, between Toulouse and Casablanca, three intermediate stops had to be established on the Iberian Peninsula: Barcelona, Alicante, and Malaga.
Thus, commercial aviation (and cargo aviation) was born in Barcelona thanks to the visionary idea of a Frenchman born in Bagnères-de-Bigorre who for years used El Prat as the first or last stop of his Aeropostal line, which is what the company was called. Initially, Latécoère's planes landed in the La Volateria field; later the airline built its own airfield, the second of the three that are today, together, the current airport, although this is a story for the fifth chapter of this series.
First passengers and cargo
In the 1920s and 30s, aviation was still taking its first steps in Barcelona. Until the end of the 1920s, the French and their airmail, which by agreement with Spain also transported mail between intermediate cities, were the only ones offering commercial air cargo services. This was light and transported in sacks, taking into account the capacity of the planes.
The first change in the sector came from Iberia and Lufthansa, which arrived in Barcelona between 1927 and 1928. The former was later replaced by CLASSA, acronym for Compañía de Líneas Aéreas Subvencionadas S.A. To give us an idea of what aviation meant at that time, we have found a piece of data: in the spring of 1930, specifically in the week of April 21 to 27, a total of 67 passengers and 587 kilos of cargo flew between Madrid and Barcelona (and back), while on the Barcelona to Marseille line that same week a total of seven passengers and 1,017 kilos of merchandise traveled. Air cargo existed. For the moment it was almost anecdotal, although it was already part of the city's economy: things that left and arrived at an unusual speed compared to any other means of transport of the moment.
After the war
The Civil War (1936-1939) was a severe blow to the country, its economy and, of course, its nascent aviation, so the scarce commercial air cargo arriving and departing from El Prat was transported by planes of the old German Lufthansa and the Italian Ala Littoria, airlines that were another symbol of Hitler and Mussolini's power in Europe. The Germans flew the line to and from Berlin, which used Barcelona as an intermediate stop to Lisbon, and the Italians arrived at El Prat airfield from Rome and Genoa.
After the war, some new domestic lines were recovered or created, in which cargo was transported in the holds of the aircraft covering them, such as those that reached Zaragoza, Valencia, Madrid, and Seville from Barcelona.
… and the post-war period
The Allied victory in World War II significantly changed the international scenario and, evidently, the aeronautical one. The all-powerful Lufthansa disappeared from the equation for years and new air operators for passengers and cargo appeared in Barcelona, such as the Swiss company Swissair for the Zurich-Geneva-El Prat-Lisbon line and the great international star: Pan American. With its flights to the United States from Barcelona starting in 1948, these flights were forced to make intermediate stops for refueling, although air cargo capacity advanced significantly thanks to these first intercontinental flights.
New air operators for passengers and cargo appeared, such as the Swiss company Swissair and Pan American, the great international starTo the regular lines of the late 40s, a series of special flights for the transport of perishables and textiles to the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe should also be added. Textile flights continued for years and later even the Spanish airline Spantax advertised the possibility of establishing an air bridge Sabadell-Manchestergiven the importance of the sector in both cities, although this would also make for another chapter.
The expansion of the 50s and 60s
The great economic change in Franco's Spain came hand in hand with the United States thanks to the agreements signed in 1953 for the cession of bases in different parts of the peninsula. In exchange for this strategic support, American investments and aid multiplied and the practically autarkic Spanish protectionism began to fall.
In the field of air cargo, the change of scenario was clear: if in 1947, after the end of the Second World War, El Prat handled 143 tons of air cargo, in 1954 more than 1,200 tons were exceeded. With larger planes and more openness, the possibility of importing materials and technology and exporting some own products grew exponentially, and the first passenger terminal saw a series of buildings dedicated to handling what passed through the hold of the planes grow alongside it.
The 60s and 70s: new terminal and another for cargo
In parallel to the growth of the economy, aviation also took off from the second half of the 60s and into the 70s. The big change for passengers came with the 1968 terminal, although air cargo continued to be handled from the old facilities. In 1970, El Prat was already handling 30,900 tons of cargo and a not inconsiderable 4,600 tons of mail.
Given this figure, in 1974, the same year the air shuttle was launched, Iberia built the airport's first specific cargo terminal. For its part, the OAAN, the airport organization predecessor of Aena, built a specific and exclusive platform for cargo flights on the airside of this terminal. The modern airport was completed and by the end of that decade, in 1979, the figure of 56,200 tons of cargo was reached, to which 6,000 tons of mail were added. Everything continued to grow steadily.
From the 90s… to the present day
It is almost impossible to talk about Barcelona in the 90s without going through the chapter of the 1992 Games, which represented a notable peak in the cargo managed at El Prat Airport: from all the athletes' materials to the horses and mares that, arriving from all over the world, participated in Barcelona'92. By then, the cargo and passenger platforms were no longer segregated due to the space needs for aircraft parking.
With Aena already founded and managing the airport since 1991, the importance of air cargo made the creation of a subsidiary logical: CLASA, Centros Logísticos Aeroportuarios (Airport Logistics Centers), which in the case of El Prat was the company that developed the entire logistics area, located south of the passenger terminal and its extensions and around the building constructed in 1974. The sector grew and had to be given what it needed: new warehouses, a general services center, more storage and treatment space, a permanent PIF or Border Inspection Post, and CLASA continued with the commercialization of all the land that strategically remains a few steps from Barcelona's international airport.
Not everything is cargo planes
If we look from the T1 windows towards the mountain in the Viladecans area, we can clearly see the airside area of Barcelona's air cargo center. There, planes are loaded and unloaded, and their merchandise comes and goes from the warehouses. On a normal day, we can see aircraft painted with the Courier DHL or UPS logos and other planes from companies like Swiftair or Prime Air, Amazon's air carrier, in addition to other purely cargo aircraft from Emirates SkyCargo, Qatar Cargo, and several large airlines that have a specific cargo branch.
These planes fly constantly to and from El Prat, and in their holds, part of the more than 150,000 tons of annual cargo, which are expected to be 177,000 in 2025, are moved. Even so, the largest portion of air cargo in Barcelona is not moved only in purely cargo planes, but much of this cargo flies in the holds of passenger planes, especially on long-haul flights.
That is why attracting long-haul flights is doubly important for Barcelona Airport. Every announcement of a new route to a transoceanic destination is celebrated as a small victory, as it not only benefits passengers who can fly directly from Barcelona to destinations in Asia, the Middle East, or different points in America (which are increasingly numerous and with more frequencies) but also in the cargo hold space, in addition to the luggage of those on board, there is a significant amount of cubic meters available for local industry (pharmaceutical, technological, textile…) to reach the world at high speed and for logistics operators to have Barcelona on the map… thanks to that airport that 100 years ago already carried postal items and parcels in fragile biplanes destined north and south, even jumping continents.