It is undoubtedly international. And intercontinental. This 2024, from El Prat one can fly to 181 airports in other countries and continents. Non-stop, directly from city to city. Barcelona is connected to the world thanks to its airport. This year, the facility officially named Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat is breaking records for flights, users, and also destinations.
In fact, this very week the direct flight to Shanghai has been restored, reconfirming that the 2019 figures have already been largely surpassed, considered until now the best year in El Prat's history in all aspects: from the desired increase in frequencies to the main European destinations, to the recovery of routes to Asia or the incorporation of new destinations in America.
Varied flights
Until a few years ago, the names of European capitals, other EU cities, and Spanish cities were dominant on the information screens of the airport terminals. Intercontinental or long-haul flights were a minority, although in recent times the growth of travel to the Middle East, Asia, and America has been exponential.
From El Prat, one can fly non-stop to city-states like Singapore, enormous countries like China, including Hong Kong, booming states like Qatar and South Korea, or kingdoms like Saudi Arabia, in addition to the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. One can also fly, although in this case in the opposite direction, to South American cities like Santiago de Chile, Sao Paulo, Bogotá, or Buenos Aires; to North American cities like Mexico City and Cancun, as well as Canadian cities like Toronto or Montreal and Calgary.
The chapter on the United States deserves special mention, as from El Prat one can reach a total of ten airports: from the megahub of Atlanta to the two in New York: JFK and Newark. With this city there is a small air bridge from El Prat, with several daily flights. One can also reach major American cities like Miami, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, or Washington, and in the state of California there are also direct flights to and from Barcelona with the airports of Los Angeles and San Francisco. In this case, the importance of the city's port as a departure and arrival point for cruises has been important to consolidate them, as the American market is the largest consumer of this tourist product.
The review can be even longer if we add Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt, countries that can be reached from Barcelona by traveling to another continent: Africa, just as Senegal and Gambia are also African. Barcelona-El Prat is an international airport. Very international.
The first flight
This vocation to connect the city with the world by air has a symbolic moment more than a century ago. Although aviation started in Spain in the same municipality of Barcelona with the first air show in 1910, it was not until eight years later that a plane arrived in Barcelona flying from another place.
It was Christmas Day 1918. Only 37 days had passed since the signing of the Armistice of Compiègne, the treaty between the German Empire and the Allies that ended World War I. The businessman Pierre-Georges Latécoère boarded a Salmson 2A2 aircraft piloted by René Cornemont from Toulouse. At half past eight in the morning, both took off for Barcelona, where they arrived after two and a half hours of flight, including a brief stop in Perpignan. Avoiding flying over the Pyrenees and following the coastline, they finally landed at the Casa Antúnez racecourse. The first flight the city received... came from abroad.
That Christmas flight served to present here the project of the first postal aviation line that started a few months later: the Toulouse-Casablanca with intermediate stops in Spain and Morocco; among them, Barcelona. Initially, the stopover in the city was made at the La Volateria airfield, although the high fees requested by its owner for each landing led the general aeropostal company itself to eventually have its own airfield, which would eventually be called Aeródromo de la Compañía Air France, although this story, that of the city of three airfields and a seaplane base, is for another chapter, which will be the last of the series.
Heading to Europe
Almost a century ago, in 1927, Iberia began flying, debuting between Barcelona and Madrid. Part of its shareholding was German, and also German was the company that in 1928 landed in El Prat to inaugurate the line to Berlin: Lufthansa. Meanwhile, in the port, the Italian seaplanes of the Società Anonima di Navigazione Aerea landed for the line to Rome, which instead of flying in a straight line between the Italian and Catalan capitals, hugged the Mediterranean coast and made intermediate stops in Genoa and Marseille. A frequent traveler on these services to and from Italy was the businessman and politician Francesc Cambó, who also frequently used the plane to travel to Germany due to his involvement in the creation of the Compañía Hispano Alemana de Electricidad. After these French, Italian, and German companies, the Belgian Sabena and the Swiss Swissair also arrived. The first, to establish an intermediate stop for its flights between the metropolis of Brussels and its colonies in Africa, and the second to offer lines between Zurich and El Prat, to which other points in the Alpine country would later be added.
War and post-war
The development of commercial aviation in Barcelona and its hinterland suffered a significant slowdown due to the Civil War, both in the impossibility of fulfilling plans to build a modern airport and due to the abandonment of airlines. Only the German airline and the Italian airlines of Ala Littoria continued to operate international airmail services with some normality, with Lisbon being added as a city connected by plane to Barcelona through Lufthansa, which ensured the air link between Portugal and Germany using the stopover in the city.
Currently, from El Prat you can fly to 181 airports in other countries and continentsInternational commercial aviation in Barcelona did not reappear with some solvency until the end of the Second World War, in which Swissair flew again to Catalonia with its Zurich-Geneva-Barcelona-Lisbon line. Until the late 50s, with the fall of the Nazi regime, Germany was out of the game and forced not to develop its own aviation, neither military nor civil, something that other airlines took advantage of by occupying the empty airspace they were leaving.
And the transoceanic project
Being able to fly to other continents, especially the American one, was always a longing for Barcelona Airport, and in fact, already in the General Plan of Works drafted in the early 40s, El Prat was considered "future transoceanic airport." The plan was ambitious and different terminal and runway configuration projects were carried out, inspired by the large European airfields, although in post-war Spain and prior to the 1953 Hispanic-American agreements, budgets for everything, including infrastructure, were limited. A provisional terminal was built which, however, displayed the letters ATB at the foot of its control tower, for Aeropuerto Transoceánico de Barcelona (Transoceanic Airport of Barcelona).
And it became transoceanic, intercontinental or long-haul with the arrival of Pan American in 1948 and its New York-Barcelona flight which made intermediate stops in the Azores and Lisbon, a milestone, considering that a few years earlier a Madrid-Barcelona flight was quite an adventure. Then came much more fluid relations between Spain and the United States, which resulted in an improvement in the number of frequencies, types of planes to fly from El Prat to the US, and the arrival of TWA, the other great North American company that also bet on Catalonia in a campaign to reach all possible territories.
From northern Europe came the Scandinavian SAS with a Copenhagen-Nice-Barcelona line, followed by the new Lufthansa, this time representing the Federal Republic of Germany and with its flights from Frankfurt. Since then, this has been one of the most important international lines from Barcelona, both for point-to-point travel and for using this German airport as an intermediate point to fly all over the world.
Then came the 60s, with the country's economic development. This translated into a progressive arrival of more airlines, especially European ones, such as those from Italy, Great Britain, Ireland… both to bring passengers destined for the city and tourists to the Costa Brava, which until 1967 did not have its own airport in Girona. Then everything continued to grow: number of passengers, destinations, companies… and although the variety was still very far from what is happening today, the airport of the late 60s, compared to that of the early 50s, represented a radical change, already with generalized jets such as Pan Am's DC-8s and Boeing 707s for the New York route, Air France's Caravelles for flights to Paris or Lufthansa's then ultra-modern 727 Europa Jets. Even what was the most advanced aircraft of its time, the Concorde, passed through Barcelona several times performing special commercial flights.
Iberia also had a European vocation from Barcelona, using El Prat as an intermediate stop for many flights to and from European capitals from Madrid, serving Barcelona as an attraction point to fill the entire passenger cabin. This same company also initially opted to offer flights to New York from Barcelona when it premiered its brand new Boeing 747s.
Olympics and future
As narrated in the chapter dedicated to the 1992 Olympic Games, the airport prepared for what was possibly the most important international event in the city's history, and was up to the task of receiving planes from all over the world. From those times of city expansion also came the interest of several international companies in having Barcelona on their route map, such as the American Delta, which has since been a loyal carrier at El Prat.
Those Olympic times coincided with the opening of European skies and the liberalization, at first timid, that radically changed the global air map. As a successful city, Barcelona was a desired destination for European airlines, both classic and new generation, multiplying the international destinations from which one could reach Barcelona and the cities to which Barcelonans could directly travel. If in the early 90s flights between El Prat and Italy were restricted to three or four cities, currently, different European companies reach 22 Italian airports from Barcelona.
Aviation has changed. It continues to be the fastest and safest way to reach destinations around the planet and the Airport has always been there, as a gateway to and from the city to the world: from a brief Barcelona-Nice by Vueling to a Singapore-Barcelona by Singapore Airlines. From a very long Santiago de Chile-Barcelona to one of the jumps to the nine destinations directly reached in Morocco.
From Level to Pan Am. From Iberia to Air China. From Vueling to Air France, and so a long list of companies with more or less history that have been loyal customers of the airport for years or almost their entire lives. They have been part of the history of the city's internationalization by air, always passing through El Prat, witness and fundamental piece of all these stories of takeoffs, landings, and development of a great metropolis.