On the occasion of World Wetlands Day, a group of environmental organizations, including Greenpeace, Ecologistas en Acción, Zeroport, Aigua és Vida and Ecologists of Catalonia, has recalled the European directives that both the Government of Pere Aragonès and the Government of Pedro Sánchez, must comply for the preservation of the Llobregat delta. It is not the first time that ecologists have put pressure on Catalan insistences in this sense: already in June they made public a manifesto in which they accused the Parliament of neglecting the EU in the protection of the Llobregat delta.
Along these lines, the entities have reiterated that the European Commission already warned Spain in 2021 that it must comply with European directives in the preservation of the Llobregat delta, in conflict with large infrastructures such as the port and the airport, and the projects for their respective expansions.
The organizations now demand an “urgent and inexcusable” meeting with the president of the Generalitat to put an end to this situation and take measures to expand SPA 146 (that of Llobregat). The proposal, which was prepared and presented more than two years ago, has been highly criticized by agricultural entities. Specifically, the Institut Agícola assures that an expansion of the Llobregat SPA puts the crops of the Parc Agrari in check and does not guarantee the preservation of poultry species.
Environmentalists know this, and denounce that the only intention of this plan is to erode the protection of wetlands, biodiversity (about 350 different species of birds) and local agriculture to increase urbanization, the growth of infrastructures such as the airport and industrial exploitation.
Even so, the plan being studied by the administrations to move forward with the expansion of the El Prat airport brings with it a large opposition movement and sometimes generates conflict between the defenders of the expansion of the SPAs and those of the agricultural sector.
