It started humbly. Like most great stories. In fact, even the most important thing that could ever happen in the world begins as a simple idea in someone's mind. In the case of Barcelona Airport, its history dates back to 1916 and two surnames: Pujol and Comabella, creators of the first company in the state dedicated exclusively to the world of aviation.
The sector had arrived in the city shortly before, a pioneer in seeing an airplane flying in Spain. It was in 1910 and by the hand of aviator Lucien Mamet. He took off from the Casa Antúnez hippodrome, land that currently corresponds to the Zona Franca, specifically where the BP building stands.
The hippodrome initially served as a flying field for the city. These were times when aviation was above all an exhibition and a challenge about how far technical advances and aviators could go, rather than something truly useful.
A utility that arrived shortly after with the outbreak of the First World War (1914-1918) and an immediate approach: if airplanes had military use, they could also have civil and commercial applications. That's how it all began... and that's how the history of Barcelona Airport started, an airport born from the union of three airfields.
La Volateria
The Casa Antúnez hippodrome was useful for the first flights and aerial exhibitions over the city. So were, in their time, the old facilities of the Real Club de Polo in its former location in Can Ràbia. In 1914 and from the land currently occupied by the Diagonal DiR gym, Roland Garrós took off, the aviator from Reunion Island who since 1928 gives his name to the famous tennis tournament held in Paris.
Two years after Garrós' exhibition over Barcelona and a still independent Sarrià, the company Pujol, Comabella y compañía rented some land in the Llobregat delta area, near the Remolar pond. They were about 600 meters long by 400 meters wide. Demonstrating that the project was serious, in addition to testing the airplanes that were built in the city, the first two fixed aeronautical hangars were installed there and a pioneering air training center was created: the Escola Catalana d'Aviació.
From La Volateria, a name inherited from a poultry farm in the area, the first flight between Barcelona and Mallorca took place, starring Salvador Hedilla, and also the first merger between aviation companies, as the Hereter company joined the existing industry, betting on what flew and settled in Barcelona's first fixed aerodrome. Shortly after, in 1919, the first commercial line also arrived at La Volateria. Compagnie Latécoère put Barcelona on the aviation map as an intermediate stop in its novel airmail service between France and North Africa, a service that in the peninsula also passed through Alicante and Malaga.
The French field
Although the first commercial flights that passed through the city landed and took off at La Volateria, the managers of Latécoère, which was later renamed Compagnie Générale Aéropostale, decided to have their own aerodrome, popularly known as campo francés (French field), which in its time (it was operational between 1920 and early 1939) was the best equipped in Spain: it was for its runways, facilities and even for having technology rarely seen then, such as a modern radiotelephone station, its own meteorological forecasting service, a small power plant and a radio direction finder.
With the founding of Air France in 1933, thanks to the merger of several aviation companies, that Barcelona airfield became the "Air France company aerodrome" for the local press, which daily reported on aircraft movements, origin, destination and even number of passengers.
Naval Aeronautics arrives
The second stage of La Volateria came from Naval Aeronautics, which is currently the Aircraft Flotilla of the Spanish Navy. The fact is that Talleres Hereter's plans to develop aviation in the area were not as expected. The company was dissolved and it was this new military body that leased the airfield to its owners.
The airfield became known as the field of the marines, which, in addition to being an improved facility in terms of infrastructure and means, had a sub-headquarters in the port of Barcelona, for the operation of seaplanes, both those of this body itself and civil ones, which arrived in the city from other Italian and French ports. Experimentally, lines with the Balearic Islands were also established.
From 1927, thanks to the Law on Airfields and Airports, this airfield became a general interest airport for Barcelona with customs status. Iberia started its history there, with its first Barcelona-Madrid 97 years ago, and other flights also arrived from Germany, France, Switzerland, and Italy.
A third field: the Canudas airfield
From 1922, Barcelona had three airfields: that of the French company Aeropostale, that of Naval Aeronautics, and Canudas, the surname of an illustrious pioneer of Catalan aviation and the great promoter for the so-called Royal Aero Club of Catalonia to have its own facilities. He succeeded.
For a few years, Barcelona was the only city on the peninsula and practically in Europe with three airfields operating simultaneously and separated by only a few kilometers.The airfield and facilities were approximately on the land where the main and transversal runways intersect today. Already then,from the Barcelona city council there was interest in developing an airport just as was happening in other large European cities, for which a Management Commission was created for its construction. In parallel, there were also works by a Royal Commissariat with the same purpose. Both agreed on the construction of a fourth and definitive airfield in L'Hospitalet or Cornellà, options that Canudas, the most expert voice at the time in this matter, ruled out. He argued that both municipalities "were already Barcelona" and "an airport could not be born subject to the growth of urban centers."
In this way, the capital of Catalonia became for a few more years the only city on the peninsula and practically in Europe with three airfields operating simultaneously and separated by only a few kilometers: that of Air France, that of Los Marinos and the Canudas, which the Generalitat de Catalunya ended up acquiring.
Uniting the fields
In 1934, the Department of Economy and Agriculture of the Government approved the project for Barcelona's international airport, a long-awaited desire that integrated the three existing facilities into a single infrastructure. Earthmoving, wetland drying, and leveling works were started by the central government, although the Civil War paused all projects in this area for a few years.
Many plans and drawings of new terminals were left behind to have airports similar to some of the great European capitals, where commercial aviation was experiencing a moment of expansion, although the armed conflict also reached the rest of the European territory. It did so years later, in the form of World War II.
The Spanish war ended in 1939, and 24 months later work resumed in the form of a General Works Plan with the clear intention of having a transatlantic airport for Barcelona, inspired by the one also being projected in London at the time: Heathrow, although with less grandiose pretensions than what ended up becoming the main European airport.
The A.T.B. arrives
In 1949, Barcelona's first international airport as such was finally inaugurated. Until then, other more or less provisional facilities served as the city's air entry and exit to the world (a world restricted to Europe and North Africa at the time), although 75 years ago a terminal or air passenger station equivalent to that of some European cities was opened. To give it more prestige, the building was crowned by a control tower.
On its facade and facing the aircraft parking platform, for a few years three capital letters stood out: A.T.B., for Aeropuerto Transoceánico de Barcelona (Transoceanic Airport of Barcelona), something that was fulfilled thanks to Pan American flights from the United States in the post-war period. What was one of the most famous companies on the planet included El Prat in its destination map.
New terminal and Miró
The 1949 terminal initially had a provisional character, although it ended up consolidating for almost two decades as Barcelona's entry and exit by plane. The development of air transport in the 40s and 50s was not the same as in the first boom of the 60s, when jets changed the use of aviation, which went from being the domain of a few to becoming normalized. Flying was not yet as common as it is today, although the change was evident.
Demand began to make the airport too small and it was expanded with an eye on 1992It was, to the point that the need to build a new terminal for Barcelona became a priority objective.In just eight years, from 1947 to 1955, passenger traffic through El Prat, then also known as Canudas Airport, went from 61,000 to 430,000 annually… and the trend continued in the following years.
The first sign of the airport's new modernity was the new and modern control tower, designed by Robert Terradas i Vía, which came into service in 1966, two years before the then brand-new terminal designed by Eduardo Aguirre and Vicente Cudós, which today is known as T2 B, a passenger building that by 1970, the year Joan Miró installed his famous ceramic mural alongside Josep Llorens i Artigas, approached three million managed passengers.
With the then single terminal, Barcelona airport grew up. As airports are usually in constant change, the first two major modifications were the construction of a specific building for the exclusive use of the Air Shuttle with Madrid in 1974, which became the most important in the world connecting two cities by air, and the arrival of the Commuter train a year later, something absolutely novel and which inaugurated a new rail-plane intermodality. With some bumps in the late 70s, the airport continued to grow.
An airport for '92
In the mid-80s, the Spanish and Catalan economies soared. This immediately translated into a notable growth in air travel. This demand began to make the 1968 terminal too small. The airport, then managed by the OAAN, Organismo Autónomo de Aeropuertos Nacionales (Autonomous Organization of National Airports), had to make a move to expand El Prat and, in addition to the annual growth figures, there was no better argument than the city's selection as the venue for the 1992 Olympic Games.
If with the 1968 terminal, Barcelona airport grew up, with the expansion, signed by Ricardo Bofill's studio, Barcelona-El Prat became a benchmark in airport design, reaching 110,000 square meters of terminals, something unthinkable just a few years earlier.
With the new design, distribution, and boarding modules with direct access gangways to the planes from the terminal, the 1992 airport, already in the hands of the new Aena, born a few months earlier, not only prepared for the Olympics but for a new phase of European aviation, with the liberalization of the skies of the current union of countries on the continent, which completely changed the way of flying.
…and T1
And as airports always evolve, that great airport designed by Bofill, which was a luminous gateway to the city in the 90s and early 21st century, became too small and the need to improve was raised again. This time with a totally new terminal: T1, on land prepared between the two parallel runways. A new building designed by the Bofill studio. The architects created a luminous, spacious air passenger station ready for the notable increase in operations that the aviation market brought to Barcelona in the 21st century. The growth has been led by a predominant company, Vueling, which has more than 41% of the market share at El Prat and a more than notable increase in the number of airlines and destinations to other continents.
If that airport that boasted of being transoceanic was so for having a direct flight to the United States, today Barcelona-El Prat is a gateway for people from all over the world and an exit to the outside thanks to having the best European flight network of any EU airport and having direct links to countries such as China, Mexico, South Korea, Colombia, Singapore, Chile, Hong Kong, Canada, Qatar or Argentina, to name just a few examples of long-haul flights.
And all that stems from those first flights in 1916. Jumps in small single and two-seater aircraft that used the same land where T1 stands today, which in 2024 has completed 15 years of service, and T2, which opened its doors 56 years ago. Buildings that are part of many stories and the history of aviation. Also history are those airfields that preceded an airport that in 2023 became the thirtieth in the world and seventh in Europe by number of travelers.