The Catalan employers' association Foment del Treball now has a proposal for the expansion of Barcelona-El Prat Airport. Well, it has eleven, but the one that most convinces Josep Sánchez Llibre and his committee is similar to that of the airport operator Aena: extending the runway to the northeast, but further than Aena intended and doing so on an elevated platform above La Ricarda wetland, which, according to the experts consulted by Foment, would respect the ecosystem of this natural environment of the Llobregat river delta. In 2021, when the expansion of Barcelona's airport was first proposed and then shelved after consensus proved elusive, the protection of La Ricarda was one of the controversial aspects.
Lluís Moreno, Foment's vice-president for development, and president of its special committee on the airport expansion, which has had input from 49 experts and representatives of business organizations and civil society in Barcelona and Catalonia, explained the 11 proposals that they considered.
None has been ruled out entirely and nor is the influential Catalan business group committed to just one, but it did score them under a series of criteria, ranging from economic to environmental, and some do not come out well. These were criticized directly by Moreno, while there were others which did achieve some accord among the experts on their merits. However, there is no perfect choice, which can be activated without obstacles. "There is no proposal that does not have some red line, there is no miraculous solution, they all require consensus", warned Moreno.
The 11 solutions studied by Foment
Among the eleven solutions, as he has called them, there is that of Aena, to extend the current third major runway by 500 metres to the north-east, which would affect the Ricarda wetlands reserve; another that would extend it only 300 metres so as not to affect it, and another that would extend it 200 metres to the south-west and 100 to the north-east. These proposals were well received by the Foment experts, as long as they have solutions for avoiding the destruction of La Ricarda, since they consider the extension of this runway to be the most plausible option.
Additionally, they studied a solution with a new diagonal runway, which is not convincing because "it almost means building a new airport"; an option to change nothing and instead divert traffic to Girona and Reus airports, which was described by Moreno as "the worst solution"; a new airport in either Vilafranca del Penedès, or in Igualada, which would cost more than 12 billion euros, which "the market cannot bear", and a return to independent runways, but in that case the noise of the aircraft would affect much more of the population.
Foment's preferred proposal has a problem: the interaction with the Port of Barcelona
The proposal for a new 3,500 metre runway to be installed on a platform above the sea was also studied and Moreno affirmed that it is "a good idea, but that maybe in 200 years it will be the right one - not now because it costs much more than its promoters affirm". Then there is Solution 10, proposing the extension of the current diagonal runway into the sea, meaning high environmental and sound impacts.
Finally, there is Solution 11, Foment's favourite. It is the only one that was not submitted to the committee but emerged from the committee itself. It involves extending the runway to the north-east by 850 metres - longer than the 500 metres that Aena had foreseen, but rather than requiring the destruction of La Ricarda, it would be built above the lagoon on pillars, maintaining the ecosystem of this natural environment.
However, it has a problem: "The further we go towards the Port of Barcelona, the more the height of the cranes at the Port of Barcelona will be limited", warned Moreno, and therefore "everything that implies extending the runway to the north must be based on major consensus."
Sánchez Llibre: "Now or never"
Foment del Treball president Josep Sánchez Llibre showed great confidence that the committee's work will serve to ensure that there is a political consensus to expand the Barcelona-El Prat Airport, and he announced that he was delivering the conclusions of the study, with the evaluation of the 11 proposals and the solutions that avoid destroying La Ricarda, to all the government administrations: to the president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, to the Spanish government, to all the parliamentary parties in both the Spanish Congress and the Catalan Parliament, to the mayor of Barcelona, to the president of the Barcelona Provincial Council and to the Spanish airport operator, Aena.
In fact, during the work of the committee, which Sánchez Llibre said should have been done by the politicians, he was already in contact with Catalan president Pere Aragonès and the Spanish government, and he urged them to reach agreement now, saying that it is "now or never". "We are facing a great opportunity, it is up to us alone to create the momentum we need, and to make economic and social progress compatible. If we let this great opportunity pass by, we will have staged a great collective failure", he added.