The expansion of Barcelona Airport has been hovering around the public sphere for some time. After the debate became heated two years ago and was set aside due to the impossibility of finding a consensus solution between very opposing positions, Barcelona Global wants to put it back on the table, a few weeks after the municipal government of the city changed, previously led by Ada Colau, who opposed the expansion. The private association has been working for months to find a solution that tries to satisfy the different parties involved, which can be summarized between those who want to increase the operational capacity of the infrastructure and those who do not want to add more tourist pressure to the city and, in addition, want to preserve the environmental heritage that could be affected by the extension of the runways.
In this scenario, the proposal put forward by Barcelona Global is to extend the third runway of El Prat Airport by 350 meters, the one closest to the sea and currently equipped with 2,660 meters. In addition to the 350 meters of pavement to be added, 300 meters of safety would have to be added, unpaved and unobstructed, known as clearway. With this extension, a total of 3,310 meters of distance for takeoffs would be reached, enough for the vast majority of large planes operating intercontinental routes and allowing the two runways of the airport to operate independently, that is, both with the capacity to allow planes to take off. The proposal made at the time by Aena, the airport manager, was to extend the third runway by 500 meters.
With this extension, according to Barcelona Global, there is no reason why the Ricarda lagoon, the main biodiversity reserve of the Llobregat Delta, should be affected. Although the water surface would not be touched, protected space by the Natura 2000 Network, the highest environmental protection granted by the European Union, would indeed be affected, so its approval would be needed, in addition to setting compensatory measures. "There are possible minimum solutions that allow the runway to be extended and ecological preservation," argues the general director of Barcelona Global, Mercè Conesa.
The lobby also asks not to exceed the limit set by the current master plan, of 90 flights per hour, and not to use the other runway, the interior one, with 3,350 meters, at full capacity in order not to increase noise pollution over nearby towns such as Castelldefels. Likewise, it argues that the operation of the two terminals at El Prat must be improved, avoiding, for example, that passengers have to move from one to the other with suitcases. For now, they do not see the satellite terminal proposed by Aena in its expansion proposal as necessary. "The capacity of the airport should not be increased per se, but rather optimized," says Josep Tabernero, director of the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO), another of the members who has participated in the Barcelona Global working group.
In addition, the private association asks to prioritize certain destinations to increase intercontinental flights that can connect Barcelona with international economic capitals and not only attract mass tourism, and to divert some towards the airports of Girona and Reus, such as the low cost airlines that have as their destination the Costa Brava and the Costa Daurada. According to calculations by Barcelona Global, increasing intercontinental flights by 10% brings 4% more international companies that settle in a city and 0.5% more to the per capita GDP. However, they note that the attraction of certain routes is a decision of the airlines, so they recognize that it is "a risk," with the possibility of ending up attracting good destinations or continuing to reinforce the airport as a low-cost destination.
Specifically, Barcelona Global sets as a priority to attract more connections to the United States, increasing routes with New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Atlanta, and adding new ones to destinations such as Austin, and Asia-Pacific, recovering direct flights to Shanghai and Hong Kong, lost with the pandemic, and adding new ones to Tokyo and New Delhi. Another of the direct flights they requested, Singapore, Singapore Airlines has announced its reactivation this very Tuesday. They also call for strengthening connections with Latin America, without specifying which cities are the most prioritized.
The attraction of certain routes is a decision of the airlines, so the association recognizes that it is "a risk," with the possibility of ending up attracting good destinations or continuing to reinforce the airport as a low cost destinationTo make all this possible, the lobby asks to start by making the ecological compensations that Aena has pending around the airport, in addition to acting now on La Ricarda, since it considers that it lives "a degraded situation", both for the birds that inhabit it and the water of its lagoon. Another member of the Barcelona Global working commission, Sergi Ferrer-Salat, president of the pharmaceutical company Ferrer and owner of the Finestres bookstore, asks not only to think about La Ricarda, advocating for also focusing on the defense of another natural area in the area such as El Remolar and social sustainability. "We cannot generate more gentrification or more tourist pressure in Barcelona," says the businessman who defines himself as an ecosocial activist, "the city's ecological and social resilience capacity is a bit at its limit."
"It's a yes to the expansion with conditions," summarizes Conesa. Barcelona Global has not calculated the investment that its plan may entail, but they believe that it can fit into the 1,700 million euros that Aena announced, taking into account that its proposal was to extend the runway by 500 meters and theirs by 350 meters. After the public presentation of its proposal, the association will begin to meet with the different administrations to explain it, starting with the Generalitat before the holidays.
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