Aena hires Tremosa to pave the way for the expansion of El Prat

BarcelonaNew signing on the board of directors of Aena, and of a former Catalan politician who has shown himself in favour of the expansion of El Prat airport. The Spanish airport manager, chaired by the socialist Mauricio Lucena, will incorporate Ramon Tremosa as an independent director, according to has advanced The Confidentialand the ARA has been able to confirm. The appointment of the still Junts councillor at Barcelona City Council, who announced a month ago that he would leave the minutes for professional reasons, will be formalised at the next general meeting of shareholders and he will join on 9 April. Although Lucena has tried hard to disassociate him, sources in the sector directly relate the signing with the aim of paving the way for the El Prat expansion project.

Economist, former Business Councillor during the Quim Torra government, former MP in the Parliament and with a decade of experience as a MEP, Tremosa has been a councillor in the Catalan capital for Junts since June 2023. On 22 January, however, announced that he would leave the council to focus on teaching at the University of Barcelona – where he has been a professor since 2022 – and in "other professional fields". His resignation from the minutes should foreseeably be formalized in the municipal plenary session this Friday. His position will be filled by Arnau Vives and Juan, until now a Junts councilor in Horta-Guinardó.

"He joins as an individual, no political space or party joins. It cannot be any other way," insisted Lucena during the press conference for the presentation of Aena's results when asked about the signing of Tremosa. The president of the airport manager has recalled that the laws that regulate the corporate governance of the company are "unequivocal" and that the appointment of the former Junts politician can only be explained by his "experience, training and knowledge to know very well what it means to be an independent director of a large listed company." "Otherwise we would be entering into the realm of illegality," added Lucena, who said that he has known Tremosa for many years, that he has "very good technical and professional opinion" and that he really likes "his personal tone."

Regarding the opinion of the new independent director of Aena on the expansion of El Prat airport, the president has acknowledged that "he has always expressed his support very clearly" for the project. "When he joins, he will reinforce a position of the company that we, the administrators, the councilors and the directors, express, which is that we want this expansion to be carried out," Lucena stressed.

Although Tremosa has always maintained an independent profile within Junts, at certain times he has acted as the economic voice of the party. The party, in addition, has always been more in favor of making El Prat airport grow than maintaining thestatus quo, although not with the exact proposal of Aena. In his latest electoral programme, Carles Puigdemont's party did not specify whether they would extend the runway or how they would do it, but they were in favour of investing in the airport, whether with a satellite terminal or changing the operation of the runways. What they did demand, in any case, was that the management of the airport should pass from Aena to the hands of the Generalitat, and this was what Tremosa himself had demanded.

"Aena imposes unilateral blackmail on us: either the extension is done as I want, extending that runway, or it is not imported," criticised the former politician in a debate on the extension of El Prat in the Parliament of Catalonia. In this same intervention, Tremosa said that Aena was giving "colonial treatment" to Catalonia and demanded that the management of the airport be carried out from the territory. In addition, he had also denounced the "pending duties" of the airport manager in environmental matters with regard to improvements in water quality and the protection of birds. Now that he is joining the Aena board, Tremosa will be able to make use of his experience in Brussels in the approval of a project that needs the green light from the European Commission to go ahead in case it affects the protected natural areas within the Natura 2000 Network.

It should be remembered that the Generalitat still has to present its own prepared by the technical commission The airport manager is studying the different alternatives. Several voices in the sector assume that the announcement will be made directly by the president, Salvador Illa, during the month of March.

Tremosa is not the first Catalan politician to be on the board of Aena. The airport manager also had as an independent director the former Unió politician Josep Antoni Durant i Lleida, who resigned from the position in 2022 and is now an independent director in the company with which Aena manages its airports in Brazil. The former popular minister Josep Piqué was also part of the board of the listed company, as was the current Minister of Industry, the socialist Jordi Hereu.

Record results and new AVE station in Girona

In 2024, Aena once again recorded record profits, obtaining a profit of 1,934 million euros, 18.6% more, as the company notified the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) on Wednesday. The group has also proposed a 27.4% higher dividend for its shareholders. Likewise, the gross operating profit (Ebidta) was 3,510 million euros, 16.1% more than in the previous year, and the group's total income reached 5,827 million euros, 13.3% more. Of this amount, aeronautical income was 3,190 million euros, 11.6% more, while commercial income reached 1,780 million euros, with an increase of 14.7%.

The Ministry of Transport has also given the green light this Wednesday to the informative study to build the new AVE station at Girona airport. These works will entail an investment of 126.7 million euros, dedicated to raising the station, deploying a pedestrian walkway to connect it with the aerodrome and a branch for the shuttle trains from Barcelona. According to the demand study, the station will be able to attract some 3.1 million users annually.