Foment demands a major institutional agreement to expand the airport

The lack of agreement among the different administrations has led Foment del Treball to raise its voice to urgently request a major institutional agreement that allows for the expansion of the Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport. According to its president, Josep Sánchez Llibre, this project "is one of the levers for the economic recovery" of Catalonia and, therefore, "we cannot afford the luxury of losing the great opportunity that putting Barcelona back on the world stage can represent."

With an estimated investment of 1.7 billion euros, the airport expansion consists of two parts. The first involves the construction of a new satellite terminal between the runways, which would increase capacity to 70 million passengers per year. In 2019, before the pandemic, the infrastructure managed by Aena approached 53 million passengers, a figure not expected to recover for another two or three years. However, this third terminal is not enough, as it is also necessary to extend one of the runways parallel to the sea by 500 meters. This action is the most controversial and the one causing the current lack of agreement, due to its environmental impact on the protected wetlands in the area. The runway extension is necessary to increase the number of landing and takeoff operations per hour to 90, as explained in The New Barcelona Post by engineer Lluís Sala, former director of Girona Airport and current vice-president of the Association of Aeronautical Engineers of Catalonia.

For Foment del Treball, it is necessary for Aena, the Generalitat, the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, the Barcelona City Council, and other municipalities in Baix Llobregat to reach an agreement, "with the complicity also of the European Union authorities." "We must turn Barcelona-El Prat Airport into an intercontinental airport hub to gain competitiveness and increase the economic progress of Catalonia," emphasizes Sánchez Llibre, who appealed to the spirit of March 4 at the Estación del Nord with a "Enough is enough! Yes to the airport expansion."

Fomento calculates that this project would provide direct employment to 83,000 people between 2022 and 2026 and would facilitate the creation of up to 350,000 new jobs, with an impact of more than two points on the growth of Catalan GDP, which would raise the airport's weight from 6.8% to 8.9%. As was already done in the protest on March 4, stemming from the urban damage caused by the demonstrations against the imprisonment of Pablo Hasél, Foment will contact other Barcelona institutions to form a common front in favor of the expansion, such as Barcelona Global, the Chamber of Commerce, the Círculo de Economía, Esade, FemCat, Pimec, the Racc, and other guilds and economic representatives of the city.