Starting this June 15, the airport regains a bit more vigor, as Aena has decided to reopen Terminal 2 of its facility in El Prat. T2 is the historic terminal opened more than half a century ago, which, through successive expansions, witnessed the success of pre- and post-1992 Barcelona until the opening of T1 in 2009 relieved its pressure. Since then, it remained a passenger station focused mainly on low-cost airlines, such as Ryanair, Easyjet, Transavia, Wizz, Eurowings, or Norwegian, as the airlines of the three major alliances, in addition to Vueling, chose to operate from the new building.
Now that the airport and its expansion are at the center of the debate, the return to life of the terminal that displays Miró and Artigas' enormous ceramic mural on its facade is a good argument to look back and see what this building meant for the history and development of Barcelona and its commercial aviation.
The provisionality of the early years
Although air activity in the El Prat de Llobregat area dates back to 1916 with the first flight schools, Barcelona did not have a true airport terminal until 1949. Attempts to have a "real" airport for the 1929 International Exhibition did not materialize, and the project for an airport owned by the Barcelona City Council on land in Viladecans in the 1930s also failed due to differences between the various municipal political groups.
Although several airlines already connected Barcelona with different capitals, the Civil War delayed any project related to the construction of an appropriate building to serve passengers for years. Finally, in 1949, a simple terminal crowned by a control tower was inaugurated, which on its facade displayed the letters A.T.B., for Aeropuerto Transoceánico de Barcelona (Transoceanic Airport of Barcelona). And it is that by the late 1940s, Pan American literally put Barcelona on the map of world air routes by including it in its network of destinations. In fact, due to lack of resources, part of the technical equipment for the El Prat control tower was provided by the American airline that flew to Barcelona from New York, making intermediate stops in the Azores and Lisbon.
When that building was inaugurated on July 6, 1949, by the Minister of Air (a ministry for these matters existed between 1939 and 1977), it was called provisional passenger air station because the definitive one was planned for the municipality of Viladecans, although those facilities were never built and that provisional terminal ended up being used for almost 20 years. When it had already exceeded all capacity limits despite some additions having been built, a brand new terminal was inaugurated in 1968, befitting Barcelona's importance, the building whose central part is now known as T2B.
A modern airport
In the late 60s, with the expansion of jet aviation, the increase in destinations served from Barcelona, and the development of the city, there was finally a reasonable airport and even a new control tower. For their time, both were state-of-the-art constructions that met the needs of the following years, although curiously the budget was not enough to initially provide air conditioning to a terminal designed by two important figures in the sector: engineer Vicente Cudós and architect Eduardo Aguirre.
For years, Aguirre and Cudós were a professional pair developing airports in different parts of Spain with an engineering company called Proyecta, which was also responsible for the creation of charter terminals in markedly tourist airports such as Ibiza, Malaga, Alicante, Palma, and Girona, which during the 60s and 70s had identical modular buildings.
The first major modification of the airport was the construction of Iberia's own terminal on the south side to dedicate it exclusively to the Barcelona-Madrid-Barcelona air shuttle service in 1974, a novel offer due to its flexibility and which ended up being one of the most important air links in the world. A year later, the commuter train service from Sants to the airport arrived, something pioneering in Spain, and a specific cargo terminal and an exclusive platform for cargo planes were also created, which eventually became integrated into the general aircraft parking area.
With some aesthetic modernizations and better use of space, the airport assumed the increase in flights and travelers that meant Barcelona was one of the 14 venues for the 1982 FIFA World Cup, when the Barça and Espanyol stadiums hosted some of the second phase matches and Camp Nou also hosted a semifinal. The importance of organizing those World Cups paled when four years later Barcelona's bid to host an Olympic Games won in the vote held after the 91st Session of the International Olympic Committee. The candidacies of Paris, Brisbane, Belgrade, Birmingham and Amsterdam were beaten by the capital of Catalonia, in its fifth direct attempt (1924, 1928, 1936 and 1940) and one in which the Government prioritized Madrid's candidacy (1972).
A terminal worthy of an Olympics
If in the World Cups the flow of visitors and events was distributed throughout the peninsula, the Games concentrated the bulk of the public, athletes and events in the Barcelona area, which in the 80s began to have a terminal that was too constrained to meet the demand it already had then. The new technical and office block inaugurated in 1990 on the north side of the terminal freed up many spaces and the important works carried out inside and around the 1968 terminal by Ricardo Bofill's Taller de Arquitectura radically changed the face of an airport that needed to modernize to be a worthy gateway to a global event, perhaps the most important experienced by a city.
The highlight of the works was the creation of two new terminals on both sides of the main building: A, dedicated to international flights, and C, focused on the air shuttle and expanding executive and business aviation, while the existing one was assigned to be B, something that has remained to this day. The modernization of both ends of the passenger building, with large glass surfaces, high ceilings, and a sense of space, gave very good impressions to users and, on the aircraft parking side, the construction of a long promenade of more than 800 meters and four triangular boarding modules with 24 direct access gangways to the aircraft (something unprecedented until then) brought the airport to the level of the great expanding city it served.
Liberalization and exponential growth
The Olympics coincided with the year of liberalization of air services in Europe. The historical flag carriers of each country lost their monopolies, initially in international services and then in domestic flights. Any airline from the European Economic Community (EU from 1993) had the option to fly between any country of this union or even make national flights. What is now as normal as taking a flight from an Irish company to fly between Barcelona and Palma was then a revolution.
That revolution led to the conversion of many Spanish charter companies into regular airlines, which multiplied the offer and exponentially grew demand thanks to more competitive prices that beat those of the until then monopoly of Iberia and its subsidiary Aviaco. The growth of services placed Barcelona already in the mid-90s among the 15 most important airports in Europe, so the terminal continued to grow: in 2001 a new module, zero, was created for regional aviation, and two years later a sixth module dedicated to international flights was added. Likewise, with the creation of an intermodal building between terminals A and B, and the expansion of terminal C, the old terminal reached the maximum of its expansion in parallel with the improvement in the capacity of parking for both ground vehicles and aircraft, the air control center and tower, and the entry into service of the third runway, complementing the main one, which was improved and expanded.
And even so, the airport did not breathe until T1 opened in 2009, which was originally going to be called T-Sur, although Aena finally preferred to clearly divide Barcelona's two large airport buildings: 1 for the brand new white terminal next to the sea and 2 for the classic one and its expansions, which, as always when there is a big novelty, was relegated during the first years to a secondary role. And, where before there was a lack of space, there was even too much, as the availability of square meters between both multiplied.
And this is the story, until 2009, of a terminal that modernized Barcelona and grew in parallel with the city's success, always having as a witness and icon the enormous mosaic that Joan Miró gave to the city in 1970.