Airport expansion is much more than a logistical matter. All major investments project a vision for the country. When the Ebro River transfer was discussed, the focus wasn't so much on cubic meters as on the feeling of permanent neglect suffered by the country's southern regions. Now, no matter how much experts talk about long runways or transoceanic connections, the debate leaves us with the unpleasant feeling of playing the country's future with a single card.
The positions for and against have been simplified. The debate is presented to us as a struggle between advocates of wholesale tourism and supporters of protecting a duck colony. Things are certainly not that simple, and it would be good if both sides would elaborate on their arguments with more reason.
That said, I don't feel particularly concerned about the survival of Ricarda's ducks, but I do believe the European Union's diagnosis of climate change and the measures its member countries have imposed to address it. And the fact that its commitments are systematically breached (Spain leads the EU in sanctions on this issue) doesn't justify why things aren't being done better here. Especially because—for example—favoring rail over air transport, in addition to helping the planet, is a necessary step toward addressing a change in the country's model that many of us consider urgent.
The fact that rail transport is a disaster should make the Generalitat reconsider whether its priority can continue to be the expansion of El Prat. Clean, providing better service to those who live here than to those who visit us.
And speaking of visitors, it seems to me to be evidence that, although El Prat becomes a hub intercontinental (which many experts doubt), the expansion will increase flights low cost and the massive influx of tourists to a city that literally can't accommodate any more. Not no—or not only—because tourists are a nuisance, but because the booming tourism sector is destroying the housing market, destroying Barcelona's personality, and threatening to turn Catalonia into an unrecognizable, low-wage country.
The fact that Aena, the company that manages El Prat Airport, has a multi-million-dollar plan to build a hotel and residential complex around the airport doesn't help dispel these doubts. Aena is owned by the state (not the Generalitat), but it's listed on the stock market and needs profits for El Prat Airport to continue to save its bottom line. Aena's profits, although Iberia is based in Barajas Airport, where all its long-haul flights arrive. The fact that airport management in a state that calls itself autonomous is centralized is an anomaly, and turns the El Prat issue into a political problem.
In short, perhaps many of us wouldn't be against the expansion of El Prat if it weren't part of public policies that seem geared toward unbridled growth, toward macroeconomic figures that, the better they line up, the less they bear the feeling of fatigue, precariousness, and regret that many Catalans feel when they see recent developments.
