The Spanish Government has rejected the latest proposal from the Government of Pere Aragonès to increase the operation of the El Prat airport in summer without having to touch the protected natural spaces of Ricarda and Remolar, affected by the expansion intended by AENA, the airport manager. Spanish, and the central Executive, and which the Catalan Executive rejects.
“It’s a fix,” said the Minister of Industry and Tourism, Jordi Hereu, on the Cafè d’Idees program to dismiss the proposal revealed this Thursday by La Vanguardia. For the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, who has been interviewed on Catalunya Ràdio, this is a “very short-range” proposal that also “does not respect” two basic premises for the Government: “One, that it respects the health of the neighbors; two, that serves to really squeeze the potential of the airport for intercontinental connection.
The Government’s proposal consists of modifying the operation of the airport runways only during the months of July and August and from ten in the morning to two in the afternoon to increase the capacity of the infrastructure and thus be able to take on a greater amount of long-haul flights.
“It is a trick to show that one is in favor of the development of the airport,” warned the former mayor of Barcelona, ??for whom the Government “is incapable of making brave strategic decisions for the future of Catalonia.” Hereu has made it clear that the central Executive’s option is to expand the airport “as a backbone infrastructure for the social, cultural and economic development of Barcelona, ??the metropolitan area and the Catalonia of the future.”
“The world is moving more than ever and what Catalonia, the metropolitan area and Spain must decide is whether we want this world that will move to come to Barcelona from all the continents of the world directly,” argued the head of Industry and Tourism, because, in his opinion. “It follows that we can attract investment and prosperity.” For Hereu, the question to be resolved is “if we want an airport so that people from around the world can come directly or we become subsidiaries of others.” For this reason, the former mayor has considered that Catalonia needs a Government that “makes decisions because we have many things at stake.”
“El Prat must be converted into an intercontinental airport, thinking about Latin America and Asia,” Minister Óscar Puente indicated along the same lines on Catalunya Ràdio.
For the former mayor of Valladolid, the Government’s proposal violates “a prior agreement that prevents this type of decision from being made; not on a whim, but due to a dialogue previously established with the neighbors” and “it worsens the acoustics of the operation of the airport” and, therefore, “harms the health of the residents, especially those of Castelldefels and Gavà”.
The Catalan Executive is also committed to increasing the complementary role of the Girona and Reus airports and channeling the growth in flights there, which is why it considers that high-speed train interconnection would be completely necessary.
In this regard, Puente has warned that “one thing is to increase or enhance Reus airport traffic, which is already being done, another to confuse that with an intercontinental connection hub that cannot be sustained on the operations of two different and distant airports. Yeah”.
For the minister, “travelers who use an intercontinental hub want the operation to take place in a single airport, not having to get off a plane, take one means of transportation and travel to another.”
Likewise, Puente has predicted dialogue to resolve the issue. “What it is about is unblocking this issue and seeking a definitive solution,” said the minister, for whom dialogue “has to occur without thinking about magical solutions, which, if they had existed, would have already been adopted.”
The leader of the PSC, Salvador Illa, has also rejected the proposal in an interview on Ràdio Estel, stating that it is “unviable” and recalling that there is “a very relevant agreement” and some “commitments” with the residents and municipalities around the airport on runway operations to reduce “acoustic damage.”
“We have always said that this must be respected, that it must be one of the starting points of the solutions proposed to expand the capacity of the airport that we defend,” he stressed.
