New measures to reduce the intense cruise ship traffic in the city. After months of negotiation, the Barcelona City Council and the Port have announced a new protocol to reorganize port activity and its impact on the city and tourism until 2030, reducing the number of cruise terminals from seven to five. To carry out this agreement, the oldest terminals on the Adossat dock (A, B, and C) will be demolished, and a new one will be built where the latter is now located, providing it with more modern infrastructure and greater capacity than the current one. However, these cruise terminals, which will now be demolished, can currently accommodate up to 12,800 passengers at once, while the new one will only be able to accommodate up to 7,000.
This new pact updates the agreements between both institutions reached in 2018, when cruise terminals were limited to seven and it was decided to concentrate all this activity on the dock furthest from the city, the Adossat dock, moving it from the Drassanes and Barcelona docks. Agreements that, according to the president of the Port of Barcelona, José Alberto Carbonell, the port institution has respected and even completed ahead of schedule.
Thus, in recent years the port has reorganized the activity of its docks, opening new spaces to citizens, such as the recently inaugurated Barcelona dock, which has allowed the creation of a new 600-linear-meter promenade along the sea. However, although these agreements managed to limit the operational capacity of the port infrastructure, they did not reduce the number of cruise passengers, which last year broke its own record, reaching 3.65 million annual passengers, even surpassing pre-pandemic figures.
The new agreement between both institutions, therefore, wants to go a step further. After months of discreet negotiation between the city council and the port, it has finally been determined that, by 2030, the port will have four private-use terminals ---areas where ships of a specific company preferably dock, such as the terminals available to MSC or Carnival Cruises--- and one large public terminal, which will begin construction in 2027, in the space currently occupied by C.
However, Carbonell has insisted that, in addition, this new space will prioritize small boats and cruises that use Barcelona as a base to "bet on quality instead of quantity." The objective is, therefore, to reduce stopover cruise passengers ---those visitors who only disembark for a few hours in the city and set sail again for a new destination----, as the mayor of Barcelona already defended, Jaume Collboni, in the Moments Estel·lars series, organized by The New Barcelona Post.
"For the first time in its history, Barcelona sets a limit to the growth of tourism and the number of cruises," remarked the mayor, who recalled that the number of cruise passengers has increased by 20% between 2018 and 2024. In contrast, with these new measures, Collboni trusts that the maximum capacity of the infrastructure to accommodate cruises can be reduced by 16%, going from a maximum of 37,000 to 31,000 daily passengers. Thus, Collboni emphasized that the Catalan capital is following the example of other cities such as Amsterdam, Dubrovnik, or Mallorca, which are also studying taking similar measures.
However, Collboni has admitted that these new measures will not have an "immediate impact," but he does trust that there will be an inflection in the curve of cruise passengers. "The objective is that tourism can be an activity not only sustainable from an environmental point of view, but also taking into account its impact on the city, public space, and residents," emphasized the mayor.
In addition to reducing the number of tourists, this new pact also includes an ambitious plan to improve the mobility and sustainability of the port infrastructure. Thus, the reforms will facilitate the installation of Onshore Power Supply (OPS) systems, a system that allows vessels to connect to the electrical grid and turn off engines while docked, thereby reducing polluting emissions.
Likewise, the pact also foresees improvements to ensure the port's connectivity with the rest of the city, incorporating bike lanes and pedestrian paths. In addition, the Porta d'Europa bridge will be duplicated to ensure better access to this part of the port institution. On the other hand, the construction of an urban corridor is also planned, reserved for public transport, taxis, bicycles, and pedestrians, which will connect Plaça de les Drassanes with Marina del Prat Vermell and the Zona Franca, an action that will involve an investment of 90 million euros. All these reforms will entail a public-private investment of 185 million euros, which are added to the 265 million euros invested to comply with the previous agreement between the City Council and the port, signed in 2018.
With all this, the forecast is that next year the transformation of the Barcelona dock will be completed, so that this area will definitively stop receiving cruises ---since the southern area is still operational---. By 2027, it is expected that both the construction of the new Terminal C and the duplication of the Porta d'Europa bridge will begin, two projects that will be completed in 2030, the deadline that both institutions have set to reorganize port activity.